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DIAZ 


PRESIDENT    PORFIRIO    DIAZ 


MAKERS   OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 
Edited  by  Basil  Williams 


DIAZ 


BY 


DAVID    HANNAY 


NEW   YORK 
HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 

1917 


T)SH-3 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


GENERAL  EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

The  author  of  this  volume  has  here  combined 
an  appreciation  of  a  man  remarkable  in  his  genera- 
tion with  a  lively  picture  of  an  American  republic, 
still  little  known  to  us  in  Europe ;  thus  fulfil- 
ling two  objects  of  this  series.  President  Diaz's 
achievements  as  a  statesman,  though  important  to  his 
contemporaries,  appear  to  have  had  only  a  passing 
value.  But  he  is  worthy  of  note  by  the  student  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  since  he  brought  his  country  to  a 
more  respectable  prominence  and  to  greater  prosperity 
than  it  had  enjoyed  since  its  original  conquest  by  the 
Spaniards  ;  and  he  also  induced  many  outside  its 
borders  to  take  an  interest,  however  mercenary  and 
uninformed  it  may  have  been,  in  the  country  he 
governed  so  absolutely  and  for  so  long  a  period.  For 
his  own  corner  of  the  world,  indeed,  he  was  truly  a 
maker  of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  is  also  interest- 
ing as  a  type,  a  particularly  favourable  type,  of  the 
condottieri  who  flourish  and  then  vanish  so  rapidly  on 
the  Central  and  South  American  scene.  Mexico  itself, 
though  so  near  a  neighbour  to  the  United  States,  is 
still  the  most  mysterious  to  us  of  all  the  American 
countries.  Perhaps  it  has  never  yet  outlived  the 
wonderful  tales  brought  back  to  Europe  of  Aztec 
cities  and  civilisation  and  the  exploits  of  Cortes,  the 

359344 


vi  GENERAL  EDITOR'S    PREFACE 

most  chivalrous  of  all  the  Spanish  adventurers. 
Mr.  Hannay  has  kept  for  us  some  of  the  mystery  in 
his  descriptions  of  the  country's  wild  rolling  uplands 
and  of  the  mediaeval  adventures  of  his  hero  and  his 
hero's  adversaries  in  this  land  of  sudden  surprises. 
He  has  also  made  the  people  and  the  land  more  real 
and  living  to  us  at  a  time  when  they  have  become 
specially  interesting  in  the  politics  of  the  world. 

BASIL   WILLIAMS. 

September,   191 6. 


CONTENTS 


PACK 


General  Editor's  Preface v 

CHAP. 

I.     Introductory i 

II.  The  Beginning  of  a  Career.        ...  29 

III.  The  French  Intervention      •        •        •        .  53 

IV.  The  Rise  to  the  First  Rank        .        .        ,  S6 
V.     The  Politician 117 

VI.  The  Fight  for  the  Presidency    .        .        .  144 

VII.     The  First  Term «  177 

VIII.     An  Interim 207 

IX.     President  for  Good 237 

X.    The  Indian  Problem 265 

XI.    Anarchy  Wells  Up 290 


Bibliography 307 

Chronology 309 

Index 31c 


DIAZ 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTO  R Y 

Jos:^  DE  LA  Cruz  Porfirio  Diaz,  known  to  all  the 
world  as  President  Porfirio  Diaz,  was  born  in  the  city 
of  Oaxaca,  capital  of  the  State  of  the  same  name,  in 
the  Republic  of  Mexico,  on,  or  within  a  few  days 
before,  the  15th  of  September,  1830.^  He  was 
baptised  on  that  day  in  the  cathedral.  No  Spaniards 
nor  Spanish-Americans  of  that  time  would  willingly 
have  incurred  the  least  risk  that  their  child  should  die 
unregenerated  by  the  water  of  baptism.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  future  President  was  born  on  the 
day  on  which  he  was  baptised,  or  not  more  than  three 
days  earlier. 

His  father,  Jose  de  la  Cruz  (Joseph  of  the  Cross) 
Diaz,  is  said  to  have  been  a  pure-blooded  Spaniard, 
but  in  the  former  Spanish  colonies  everyone  in  whom 
a  strain  of  Indian  blood  is  not  too  marked  to  be  over- 
looked ranks  as  white.  TWhen  Porfirio  had  become 

^  The  letter  "  x,"  which  is  now  used  by  the  Spaniards  only  in  words  of 
Greek  or  Latin  origin  adopted  late  in  the  history  of  their  language,  was 
formerly  employed  to  represent  the  sound  "  sh,"  which  does  not  exist  in 
Castihan,  but  is  common  in  the  Indian  tongues.  The  Indian  pronunciation 
of  the  President's  birthplace  would  be  Oashaca,  and  of  his  country  Meshico. 
But  the  Spaniards  do  not  like  the  sound  and  have  in  practice  replaced  it  by 
the  guttural  "  j,"  which  is  a  strong  "  h,"  They  write  Oajaca  and  Mejico. 
We  keep  the  spelling  we  first  knew  and  therefore  mispronounce  both  ways, 

D.  B 


2  DIAZ 

the  foremost  man  in  Mexico,  his  flatterers  discovered 
that  Jose  de  la  Cruz  descended  from  one  of  the  con- 
quistador es.|*  The  ^President's  enemies  indeed  were 
ready  to  affirm  that  he  was  the  bastard  of  a  priestj 
The  first  assertion  is  only  an  example  of  a  world-wide 
folly,  and  the  second  may  be  dismissed  as  a  specimen 
of  Spanish-American  political  polemic.  In  an  account 
of  his  "  Parents,  Childhood  and  Youth,"  published 
with  his  consent  and  aid  by  Genaro  Garcia  in  1906,  ^ 
the  President's  father  is  stated  to  have  been  a  poor 
and  illiterate  man  who  worked  as  the  "  dependiente  " 
of  a  firm  of  traders.  The  word  would  be  applied  to  a 
porter  or  workman  of  that  level.  He  ranked,  in  fact, 
a  little  above  the  class  of  the  "  peones  "  or  agricultural 
labourers,  who  in  colonial  times  were,  and  in  practice 
still  are,  serfs  in  Mexico.  He  was  at  least  personally 
free.  In  1808  he  married  Patrona  Mori,  the  daughter 
of  Mariano  Mori,  an  immigrant,  or  son  of  an  immigrant, 
from  Asturias  in  Old  Spain,  and  of  his  wife  Tecla 
Cortes,  a  pure-blooded  Mixteca  Indian.  The  marriage 
was  performed  at  the  village  of  San  Sebastian  Etla  in 
Oaxaca.  After  working  for  some  years  in  the  Sierra 
de  Ixtlan,  Jose  took  his  half-Indian  wife  to  Xochistla- 
huaca  in  the  province  of  Tlaxcala  and  the  bishopric 
of  Puebla  de  los  Angeles.  Here  he  became  a  squatter 
or  homesteader  on  a  piece  of  virgin  soil.  In  one  respect 
at  least  Jose  resembled  his  son.  He  was  a  hard  worker. 
Though  he  had  no  capital,  and  could  neither  buy 
machinery  nor  hire  much  help,  he  contrived  to  plant 
his  little  holding  with  sugar-cane,  and  he  added  a 
small  store  to  his  cane-growing.  After  a  few  years  he 
had  something  saved  and  something  to  sell.  With 
the  proceeds  of  his  hard  work  he  returned  to  his  native 
province  Oaxaca,   bought   a   little   piece   of    ground 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

which  he  planted  with  "  maguey,"  the  aloe  from  which 
the  native  liquor  pulque  is  tapped.  To  provide  an 
outlet  for  the  produce  of  his  "  magueyera  "  he  opened 
a  wayside  inn,  a  "  meson,"  at  the  town  of  Oaxaca, 
and  further  undertook  to  act  as  farrier  and  veterinary 
surgeon.  Jose  de  la  Cruz,  who  is  also  said  to  have 
been  at  some  time  farrier  in  a  cavalry  regiment,  was 
plainly  a  handy  man. 

Porfirio,  who  does  not  appear  ever  to  have  used  his 
father's  "  font  name  "  (nombre  de  pila),  was  the  sixth 
child  and  eldest  surviving  son  of  these  worthy  people. 
Another  son,  Felix,  who  in  later  years  shared  his 
fortunes,  was  born  after  him.  But  in  1833  the  father 
died.  No  man  not  a  politician  or  capitalist  and  usurer 
had  much  chance  of  making  money  in  Mexico  in  that 
age  of  anarchy.  The  death  of  the  laborious  father 
plunged  his  family  into  years  of  hard  struggle  with 
sheer  hunger.  Patrona  Mori  made  an  effort  to  keep 
the  "  meson  "  going,  but  had  to  give  it  up.  If  it  were 
not  that  the  Mexican  needs  little  and  that  the  widow 
had  inherited  some  small  handful  of  money  from  her 
husband,  it  would  be  hard  to  see  how  they  survived. 
By  untold  miracles  of  thrift  and  work,  aided  by  the 
kindly  heat  of  the  sun,  which  makes  fires  rarely 
necessary  and  warm  clothes  a  superfluity  in  Oaxaca, 
Patrona  kept  her  own  head  and  the  young  heads 
dependent  on  her  above  water.  She  had  relatives 
among  the  beneficed  clergy,  then  the  wealthiest  class 
in  Mexico,  but  they  do  not  appear  to  have  given  her 
much  help,  if  any. 

By  one  means  or  another,  at  the  cost  of  sacrifices 
more  or  less  cruel,  Porfirio  was  able  to  get  some 
primary  education.  He  was  placed  with  a  carpenter 
whose  trade  he  picked  up  while  attending  school, 

B    2 


4  DIAZ 

probably  not  for  long  hours  nor  with  exact  regularity. 
At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  was  placed  in  the  local 
seminary  (Seminario  Pontificial).  The  mother,  be- 
sides wishing,  as  was  natural,  to  see  her  son  "  wag 
his  pow  in  a  pulpit,"  knew  that  it  was  far  easier  to 
provide  for  ten  men  in  the  Church  than  for  one  out  of 
it.  The  licentiate  Dominguez,  his  godfather,  who 
was  then  a  canon  of  Oaxaca,  and  who  later  on  was  the 
bishop,  appears  to  have  given  Porfirio  some  aid.  But 
the  lad,  who  was  somewhat  restive  in  the  seminary, 
had  to  eke  out  his  allowance  by  doing  odd  jobs  of 
carpentry.  During  the  years  of  studies  in  the  seminary 
he  had  an  interval  of  military  drill.  1846  and  1847 
were  the  years  of  the  war  with  the  United  States, 
and  Oaxaca  raised  a  militia  battalion.  It  was  known 
by  the  not  very  martial  name  of  the  "  Peor  es  Nada," 
which  may  be  translated  as  "  nothing  would  be  still 
worse."  It  consisted  wholly  of  boys.  At  this  time 
Porfirio  had  the  advantage  of  attending  a  course  of 
lectures  on  "  tactics  "  and  "  strategy  "  given  at  the 
local  Institute  of  Science  and  Art  by  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Ignacio  Uria.  In  the  hope  of  seeing  more 
service  than  was  offered  to  this  corps  he  tramped  to 
Mexico,  but  too  late  to  share  in  the  war.  On  the  whole 
he  showed  himself  a  lad  of  spirit  and  resource,  as  when 
he  provided  himself  with  a  fowling-piece  by  buying 
a  rusty  gun  barrel  from  a  rag  and  bone  shop,  fitting  to 
it  the  flint  and  steel  of  a  broken  horse  pistol,  and 
mounting  it  on  a  butt  of  his  own  constructing.  The 
historian  does  not  record  whether  he  ever  fired  his 
patchwork  weapon,  or  if  so,  what  happened.  As 
Porfirio  survived  to  use  more  scientific  weapons,  it  is 
probable  that  he  never  put  his  handiwork  to  a  hard 
test.     He    drilled    his    fellow  -  schoolboys,    as    other 


INTRODUCTORY  S 

warriors  are  said  to  have  done,  maintained  discipline 
by  rough  and  ready  methods,  and  used  his  command  so 
as  to  render  himself  a  serious  pest.  Imprisonment 
for  a  month  in  the  seminary  cell  was  the  reward  of  one 
of  his  achievements.  In  short,  he  was  as  absolute  a 
nuisance  as  only  a  healthy  boy  ought  to  be. 

In  1849  he  had  finished  his  course  at  the  seminary. 
What  he  had  learnt  was  no  doubt  a  trifle,  but  he  had 
decided  that  he  was  not  of  the  wood  of  which  priests 
are  made  even  in  Mexico.  To  the  great  wrath  of  his 
godfather,  the  Canon  Dominguez,  he  refused  to  take 
orders.  His  mother  wept  and  argued  in  vain. 
Porfirio  had  his  way,  and  the  last  ten  Mexican  dollars 
of  his  father's  poor  hoard  were  spent  in  buying  law- 
books for  him.  He  had  decided  to  take  to  the  law. 
The  intention  was  so  far  put  into  execution  that  he 
attended  the  lectures  of  his  future  chief  in  war  and 
politics  during  many  years,  the  Zapoteca  Indian 
Benito  Juarez,  then  professor  at  the  Institute  of 
Oaxaca.  He  even  passed  his  first  examination  in 
Civil  and  Canon  Law  in  1853.  But  in  that  year  events 
occurred  which  decided  that  the  future  of  Porfirio 
Diaz  was  to  be  spent  in  winning  fame,  power,  and 
wealth  in  the  saddle  and  by  the  sword.  If  the  story 
is  not  to  be  a  meaningless  series  of  unintelligible  inci- 
dents, we  must  first  understand  what  was  the  condi- 
tion, social  and  political,  of  Mexico  when  his  career 
began,  and  this  we  shall  never  be  able  to  do  if  we  do  not 
go  back  to  the  antecedents  of  the  Republic,  not  of 
course  for  the  purpose  of  giving  a  history  of  the  colonial 
period,  but  in  order  to  comprehend  what  were  the 
inherited  beliefs  and  tendencies  which  inevitably 
conditioned  the  minds  and  acts  of  the  republicans. 

Englishmen  and  Americans  have  often  been  less 


6  DIAZ 

than  just  because  they  have  expected  what  was  not 
to  be  hoped  for  from  the  Spanish-speaking  peoples  of 
the  New  World.  They  have  generally  begun  by 
assuming  that  if  the  Mexicans  have  not  behaved  as 
they  themselves  would  have  done,  the  explanation  of 
the  difference  is  to  be  sought  in  the  mere  vice  or  folly 
of  individuals.  Vice  and  folly  have  abounded  in 
Spanish  America,  but  when  we  are  judging  the  conduct 
of  persons,  fair  criticism  requires  that  we  should  allow 
for  what  they  have  inherited  in  thought  and  habit 
from  the  three  centuries  during  which  they  were 
colonies  of  Spain. 

A  Spanish  colony  was  everything  which  an  English 
colony  was  not. 

The  men  who  founded  the  English  colonies  in 
America  differed  in  origin  and  character.  But  there 
were  certain  points,  and  those  of  the  most  vital  order, 
on  which  they  were  similar.  They  came  from  a 
country  which  had  for  centuries  been  a  true  common- 
wealth,  a  united  nation.  They  had  been  accustomed 
if  not  to  actual  participation  in  the  work  of  self- 
government,  at  least  to  the  sight  of  it.  They  were 
equally  accustomed  to  the  thought  that  they  had  a 
share  first  in  the  making,  and  then  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  law.  And  then  they  came  under  a  certain 
influence  of  a  religious  character.  Their  doctrines, 
their  dogmas,  their  ideas  and  preferences  in  Church 
government  were  not  the  things  which  mattered. 
Beliefs  and  theories  might  die,  or  undergo  inward 
changes  in  spirit,  without  affecting  the  radical  unlike- 
ness  which  divided  the  English  from  the  Spanish 
colonist.  If  we  except  the  few  Roman  Catholics  who 
found  a  refuge  in  Maryland,  the  English  colonies, 
north,  middle,  and  southern,  were  settled  by  men 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

who,  whether  they  came  from  England  or  from  Scot- 
land, or  were  Palatines  or  French  Huguenots,  had  all 
alike  crossed  the  line  between  the  Holy  Roman 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church  and  the  Protestant 
world.  For  them  the  Reformation  in  all  its  manifes- 
tations had  swept  away  the  rising  circles  of  teachers, 
rulers,  intercessors — the  Heavenly  Host  and  the  earthly 
hierarchy — which  hung  over  the  mediaeval  man  and 
spread  between  him  and  God.  Salvation  to  them  was 
not  to  be  won  by  acceptance  of  an  ancient  divinely 
inspired  authority,  by  obedience  to  its  orders,  and 
humble  reliance  on  its  wisdom,  but  by  each  of  them 
by  their  own  faith  and  conduct  and  the  will  of  God 
acting  directly  on  them.  That  the  types  of  character 
produced  and  fostered  by  this  revolt  against  authority 
in  the  infinitely  important  sphere  of  religion  were  cften 
unamiable  and  sometimes  eccentric  to  absurdity,  are 
propositions  nobody  need  take  the  trouble  to  deny. 
Es  irrt  der  Mensch  so  lang  er  strebt.  The  essential 
truth  is  that  Protestantism  tended  to  foster  the 
capacity  to  think  and  act  for  yourself  on  all  sides  of 
life.  The  men  and  women  who  would  not  throw  the 
task  of  saving  their  souls  on  an  inspired  priesthood, 
who  read  a  book  and  drew  their  own  deductions, 
would  not  be  the  passive  flock  of  a  mundane  authority 
in  the  business  of  government. 

These  colonists,  predisposed  as  they  were  to  develop 
and  act  freely,  came  to  an  open  field.  The  thinly 
scattered  tribes  of  Indian  warriors  and  hunters  whom 
they  found  in  front  of  them  could  neither  assimilate 
with  them  nor  resist  them  effectually.  Therefore 
they  could  exercise  no  influence  on  the  European 
intruders  on  their  forests  and  their  hunting  grounds. 
A  further  and  a  most  vital  difference  was  that  the 


8  DIAZ 

English  colonists  came  with  their  wives  and  children 
to  form  communities,  and  to  till  the  soil. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Spanish  colonies  we  meet  at 
once  with  the  exact  opposite  of  every  one  of  these 
conditions,  moral  or  material.  Spain  was  not  a 
commonwealth,  a  nation.  It  is  only  becoming  one  in 
our  own  time.  In  the  age  of  the  conquest  it  was 
a  collection  of  kingdoms,  countships,  and  lordships 
which  were  held  together  because  the  same  prince 
was  the  sovereign  of  each  of  them.  And  these  various 
parts  were  socially  divided  into  classes  of  nobles 
and  non-nobles,  town  and  country.  Old  Christians  and 
New  Christians,  who  came  from  converted  (for  the 
most  part  forcibly  converted)  Jews  and  Moors.  The 
old  Christians  were  clean  in  blood,  and  the  new  were 
unclean — stained  by  admixture  of  Jew  or  Moor. 

The  reader,  who  may  have  heard  of  the  power  of  the 
mediaeval  Spanish  cortes,  the  vigorous  municipalities 
and  provincial  institutions  of  old  Spain,  may  be 
surprised  to  hear  that  the  people  had  no  practice  in 
self-government.  But  it  is  true.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  case  in  the  earlier  Middle  Ages  (and  a 
good  deal  in  the  way  of  restriction  would  have  to  be 
said  on  that  point),  the  confusions  of  the  later  four- 
teenth and  the  whole  fifteenth  century  till  the  acces- 
sion of  the  Catholic  sovereigns  had  disintegrated 
cortes  and  municipalities  alike.  The  Spaniards  had 
been  saved  from  mere  anarchy  by  the  royal  authority 
alone.  The  town  councils  were  little  more  than 
ornaments,  self-electing,  or  confined  to  a  few  families. 
All  effective  power  was  in  the  hands  of  royal  officers. 
As  for  the  law,  it  was  an  art  and  mystery  confined  to 
the  lawyers,  who  were  the  most  useful  agents  of  the 
King.     There  was  no  jury  in  Spain. 


I 


u 

% 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

When  we  turn  to  the  Church  as  it  had  developed  in 
Spain,  we  see  an  art  and  mystery  belonging  to  the 
clergy.  The  laymen,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  who 
were  effectually  weeded  out  by  the  Inquisition,  left 
the  doctrines  and  the  dogmas  to  the  clergy.  For 
themselves,  they  were  taught  to  believe  explicitly  in 
the  Church  and  impHcitly  in  all  the  Church  held  to  be 
true.  What  the  King  wills  is  the  law.  What  the 
Church  propounds  is  the  truth.  These  were  the  two 
fundamental  principles  of  Spanish  government.  When 
a  Mexican  viceroy  told  his  subjects  that  their  duty  was 
not  to  think  but  to  obey,  he  was  stating  the  accepted 
orthodox  rule.  Religion  for  the  Spaniard  was  in  the 
main  the  performance  of  certain  acts  and  ceremonies, 
the  participation  in  certain  material  means  of  salva- 
tion which  the  priest  alone  could  provide.  To  suppose 
that  this  double  yoke  was  imposed  by  force  on  a 
reluctant  people  would  be  to  misunderstand  Spanish 
history  altogether.  The  royal  authority  was  accepted 
because  it  was  their  one  protection  against  anarchy. 
The  Church  was  obeyed  because  it  alone  by  its  wonder- 
working sacraments  and  its  absolutions  could  save 
them  from  hell  fire.  Orthodoxy  was  the  honourable 
distinction  of  the  old  Spaniard  of  clean  blood. 
Heterodoxy  was  the  brand  of  the  inferior  race,  the 
unclean  class.  No  submission  to  the  Church  was  other 
than  honourable.  To  dare  to  think  for  yourself  was 
dangerous  and  shameful. 

Now  if  a  people  with  these  ideas  and  rules  of  conduct 
ad  come  to  "  the  Indies,"  as  the  Spaniards  always  ) 
called  their  possessions  in  America,  bringing  their 
wives  and  children  for  the  purpose  of  tilling  the  land, 
they  would  not  have  brought  with  them  the  elements 
of  a  self-governing  polity.     But  they  came  as  soldiers,  \ 


lo  DIAZ 

as  adventurers  in  search  of  fortunes  to  be  made  rapidly 
by  the  sword,  and  to  be  taken  back  to  be  enjoyed  in 
Spain.  With  few  exceptions  the  first  comers  laid 
their  bones  in  the  New  World  after  begetting  a  larger 
or  a  smaller  number  of  children  by  their  female  Indian 
captives.  The  Government  was  so  far  from  encourag- 
ing real  settlement  that  it  put  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
the  colonist  after  the  first  work  of  the  conquest.  It 
feared  the  formation  at  a  distance  of  strong  com- 
munities, because  they  might  be  tempted  to  consult 
their  own  interests  rather  than  those  of  the  home 
Government.  The  very  merchant  who  wished  to  go 
in  order  to  look  after  his  affairs  had  to  obtain  a  permit, 
which  was  given  him  for  a  time,  and  only  on  the  pro- 
duction of  a  written  certificate  from  his  wife  that  she 
consented  to  his  absence.  He  was  not  to  be  allowed 
to  take  her  lest  he  should  be  tempted  to  remain.  The 
aim  of  the  State  was  to  found  a  dominion  wherein 
officials  and  soldiers  should  direct  the  labour  of  a  native 
population  so  as  to  produce  a  great  revenue  for  the 
Crown.  That  Spaniards  continued  to  go  is  true. 
Sometimes  the  King  was  tempted  to  allow  emigration 
to  develop  some  mining  industry  and  augment  the 
royal  share  of  the  bullion.  Sometimes  he  was  weak. 
At  all  times  his  officials  were  corrupt  and  could  be 
bribed.  Men  who  shipped  as  sailors  or  soldiers  in 
the  galleons  deserted  and  escaped  up  country,  where 
they  knew  they  were  sure  of  good  pay. 

There  were  differences  between  the  colonies,  though 
they  were  not  great.  As  our  business  is  with  Mexico, 
it  will  be  enough  to  speak  of  "  The  Kingdom  of  New 
Spain,"  to  give  the  proper  official  title.  When  it  was 
finally  settled  it  extended  from  Central  America  in  the 
south  to  a  vague  frontier  on  the  north,  from  Upper 


INTRODUCTORY  ii 

California  across  to  Florida.  Five  distinct  elements  of 
population  were  scattered  over  this  vast  territory — 
the  Creoles,  the  Mestizos,  the  Mulattos,  the  Zamba- 
higos,  and  the  native  Indians. 

By  the  Creoles  are  to  be  understood  the  descendants 
of  Spaniards  who  had,  or  were  by  general  consent 
considered  as  having,  no  mixture  of  Indian  or  negro 
blood.  "  Criar "  in  Spanish  is  "  to  breed,"  and, 
properly  speaking,  whatever  the  Spaniard  brought  to 
the  Indies  and  cultivated  there — his  own  race,  his 
horse,  his  ass,  his  cattle,  pigs,  poultry,  and  plants — 
was  criollo.  The  combination  of  Spaniard  and  Indian 
was  mestizo  (mixed).  When  the  diminution  of  Indian 
labour  and  the  desire  of  the  home  Government  to 
spare  the  native  population  led  to  the  introduction 
of  negro  slaves,  there  came  the  mixture  of  Spaniard 
and  black,  who  is  the  mulato.  The  zambahigo  was  the 
half-bred  Indian  and  black.  Mulattos  and  Zambahigos 
(from  which  comes  our  Sambo)  were  less  important  in 
Mexico  than  in  some  other  Spanish  colonies.  Finally 
there  were  the  native  Indians  of  over  a  hundred 
tribes  speaking  dialects  of  sixteen  languages.  For 
long  they  formed  the  bulk  of  the  population. 

The  Spaniard  did  not  find  a  free  field  when  he  came 
to  Mexico.     The  native  civilisations  of  America  were\ 
no  doubt,  as  Gibbon  says,  "  strangely  magnified  "  by 
the   conquistadores  who  first   saw   them.     Still  the 
Mexican  Indians  cultivated  the  land,  built  towns,  and 
had  a  social  order  not  very  inferior,  if  it  was  at  all^ 
inferior,  to  that  of  the  Spaniards  themselves.     Mere'^ 
hunters  and  savages,  "  Indianos  bravos,"  were  met ' 
only  in  the  far  north  and  south.     In  the  central  mass  \^ 
of   the    kingdom    of   New    Spain    the    natives    were ' 
''  Mansos  "   (tame)   or   "  Pueblo  "   (village)    Indians. 


12  DIAZ 

They  diminished  before  the  Spaniard,  but  they  did  ■ 
not  perish  utterly,  and  after  a  time  they  began  again 
to  increase.  They  were  in  various  degrees  capable 
of  some  civilisation,  and  not  all  were  at  any  time 
enemies  to  the  Spaniard.  On  one  point  the  histories 
of  the  Spanish  conquest  of  Mexico  and  the  British 
conquest  of  India  touch  one  another.  Cortes  won  by 
combining  under  his  banner  many  tribes  which  were 
in  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  the  Aztecs,  just  as  the 
East  India  Company  always  found  native  allies  and 
willing  subjects.  The  army  which  took  the  Aztec 
Tenochtitlan,  the  city  of  Mexico,  consisted  mainly  of 
Indians.  Friendly  relations  and  a  certain  interpene- 
tration  of  the  races,  not  only  in  blood,  but  in  character, 
were  possible  as  between  Spaniard  and  Indian.  Some 
of  the  native  races  maintained  a  measure  of  national 
existence.  This  was  particularly  the  case  with  the 
Zapotecas  of  Oaxaca,  to  whom  Benito  Juarez  belonged 
entirely,  and  the  Mixtecas,  from  whom  Diaz  descended 
through  his  mother.  It  should  be  noted,  too,  that  a 
mixture  of  Indian  blood  is  held  to  fortify  in  Spanish 
America  and  in  modern  times  carries  no  stigma.  The 
mixture  of  negro  blood  was  always  a  discredit,  for  it 
was  considered  less  natural. 

So  far  we  have  considered  only  those  parts  of  the 
population  which  belonged  by  birth  to  Mexico.  But 
there  was  another,  and  one  of  commanding  impor- 
tance by  its  direct  action  and  by  the  consequences  of 
its  work.  This  was  the  "  Peninsular  "  or  Spaniard 
from  Old  Spain,  who  came  generation  after  genera- 
tion, partly  to  recruit  but  mainly  to  govern — as  civil 
officials,  as  soldiers,  and  as  Churchmen.  In  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  the  Bourbon  dynasty  had 
modified  the  policy  of  its  predecessors,  they  came  freely 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

as  traders.  Then  they  commonly  married  in  the 
country,  and  their  children  recruited  the  Creole  or  the 
Mestizo  elements.  But  it  is  as  a  governor,  an  official, 
or  a  priest  that  the  Peninsular  best  deserves  notice. 

The  mere  framework  of  Spanish  colonial  govern- 
ment need  not  be  described  at  large.  There  was  a 
viceroy,  commonly  a  great  noble,  who  was  preferred 
because  his  rank,  his  family  connections,  and  his 
estates  at  home  were  guarantees  that  he  would  not 
try  to  make  himself  king.  Beside  him,  rather  than 
below  him,  was  the  audiencia  (the  "  hearing  "),  com- 
posed of  lawyers,  the  oidores  (or  "  hearers  ").  It  was 
the  viceroy's  privy  council,  and  it  was  a  law  court 
from  which  there  was  an  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Council 
of  the  Indies  at  Seville.  When  it  sat  as  privy  council 
the  viceroy  presided.  When  it  sat  as  a  law  court  its 
president  was  its  chief.  When  the  viceroy's  term  of 
office  was  over,  the  audiencia  had  a  right  to  inspect 
and  pass  his  accounts.  It  could  make  a  report  on  his 
conduct  while  in  office.  The  audiencia  was  in  fact  a 
check  on  the  viceroy,  and  if  he  died  in  office  it  ad- 
ministered until  his  successor  came.  Under  these 
two  was  an  organisation  of  officials  who  need  not  be 
named.  They  were  necessary  subordinates  and  could 
easily  be  paralleled  from  British  India,  or  any  Crown 
colony.  The  Church  was  fully  organised  with  arch- 
bishop, bishops,  lesser  clergy,  monastic  orders,  and 
Jesuits.  No  more  need  be  said  of  it  now  except  that, 
by  grants  from  the  popes,  the  regalities  of  the  Crown 
were  great  in  Mexico,  and  its  control  of  the  Church 
was  complete.  The  King  was  "  Lord  High  Constable 
of  the  Christian  Army." 

The  machine  was  after  all  but  a  machine  capable  of 
being  used  for  good  or  for  evil.     The  spirit  of  the 


14  DIAZ 

direction  was  the  vital  question.  The  first  truth  about 
it  is  that  the  Spanish  colonial  Government  was  the 
very  faithful  representative  of  the  distrust  felt  for  all 
the  elements  of  the  Mexican  population  by  the  rulers 
at  home.  It  may  be  said  to  have  been  wholly  composed 
of  Peninsulares  with  a  few  exceptions.  The  natural 
love  of  the  Spaniards  for  a  place  under  Government 
was  a  strong  influence  no  doubt,  but  the  main  reason 
why  the  Spanish  Crown  filled  all  offices  by  men  it  sent 
out  was  the  abiding  dread  lest  the  colonists  should 
render  themselves  independent.  There  was  a  real] 
reason  for  this  distrust.  The  Spanish  Law  of  Trade, 
like  our  own  Navigation  Laws,  aimed  at  restricting 
the  whole  trade  of  its  colonies  to  the  mother  country. 
This  was  of  course  a  grievance,  and  led  (as  the  Naviga- 
tion Laws  did  in  New  England)  to  wholesale  smuggling. 
But  there  was  another  reason  and  a  more  potent  one. 
When  the  Government  of  the  King  in  early  days  had 
to  settle  its  hold  on  the  Indies  with  few  troops  it  made 
use  of  a  very  old  device.  It  handed  the  Government 
of  the  Indians  to  encomenderos.  The  encomendero 
held  his  power  as  a  trust  in  commendam  for  life,  or  for 
a  term  of  years,  or  during  pleasure.  He  was  in  fact 
a  zemindar  who  controlled  the  Indians  for  the  King, 
raised  revenue,  and  took  his  dues.  By  a  process  with 
which  Europe  was  once  very  familiar,  the  life  or 
temporary  office  became  an  hereditary  property.  That 
the  King  was  the  only  owner  of  the  soil  by  grant  from 
the  Pope  and  by  conquest  was  a  maxim  which  figured 
in  law-books.  That  he  had  the  right  to  revoke  the 
encomiendas  singly,  or  altogether,  no  lawyer  doubted. 
But  the  right  was  one  thing,  and  the  might  was 
another.  Whenever  there  was  the  merest  suggestion 
of  a  revocation,  a  threat  of  rebellion  was  automatically 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

produced.  The  encomendero  was  so  completely  the 
master  of  his  Indians  that  they  would  follow  him  in  a 
revolt.  He  did  not  wish  to  rebel  if  he  was  let  alone, 
but  if  he  was  to  be  deprived  of  his  holding  he  would 
make  a  fight.  The  King  of  Spain  was  nearly  as 
helpless  in  the  presence  of  the  opposition  of  the  united 
encomenderos  as  any  king  of  the  eleventh  century 
would  have  been  if  faced  by  a  universal  refusal  of 
homage  by  the  Crown  vassals.  When  menaced  by 
that  peril  the  Spanish  kings  yielded.  They  made  a 
struggle.  Their  Laws  of  the  Indies  have  been  praised 
for  the  provision  they  contained  to  protect  the  Indians 
from  ill-usage.  The  intention  was  honourable,  and 
every  credit  may  be  given  to  the  good-will  of  the  King. 
In  Mexico  the  laws  did  produce  some  effect.  They 
helped  to  save  some  Indian  communities  from 
extinction  by  forced  labour  in  the  mines.  They 
secured  some  measure  of  protection  for  Indian  towns 
and  endowed  them  with  communal  lands  known  as 
"  ejidos^'^  i.^.,  exits.  But  no  injustice  is  done  to  the 
King  if  we  assume  that  he  and  his  advisers  were  quite 
as  anxious  to  clip  the  wings  of  the  encomendero  as  to 
protect  the  Indians.  Now,  if  the  Indies  were  to  be 
governed  by  the  Creoles,  the  officers  must,  for  lack 
of  any  other  body  from  which  to  take  them,  be  sought 
in  that  very  class.  Therefore  all  offices  were  filled 
from  Spain.  The  encomenderos,  predecessors,  if  not 
actual  ancestors,  of  the  ''  hacendados,"  the  overgrown 
Mexican  landlords  of  to-day,  with  their  five  million  or 
even  twenty  million  acres  of  land,  were  left  in  posses- 
sion of  their  power  over  the  rural  Indians,  and  the 
Government  was  directed  by  officials  from  Spain. 

Mexico  was  not  without  the  germs  of  what  might 
have  been,  or  perhaps  only  looks  on  paper  as  what 


i6  DIAZ 

might  have  been,  a  political  organisation.  There 
were  town  councils  (cabildos),  and  there  were  occasions 
in  Spanish  colonial  history  when  delegates  from  a 
number  of  these  councils  were  assembled  in  a  con- 
vention or  a  cortes.  But  cabildos  and  cortes  alike 
were  the  reflections  of  the  worn-out  institutions  of  the 
mother  country.  The  town  councils  were  self- 
electing.  The  outgoing  members  at  the  end  of  their 
year  of  office  named  their  successors,  who  at  the  close 
of  their  term  repaid  the  compliment.  So  a  quiet 
rotation  of  office  was  kept  up  between  a  select  number 
of  privileged  families.  Such  as  they  were,  they  would 
have  provided  the  machinery  of  a  vigorous  colonial 
system  of  self-government  if  there  had  been  any  wish 
for  one.  But  there  was  not.  Segregation,  isolation, 
a  secretive  life  for  family  and  town,  have  always  been 
notes  of  the  Spaniards.  They  have  never  shown  a 
good  capacity  to  combine  for  any  political  purpose — 
have  always  been  inclined  to  personal,  family,  and 
local  rivalries  and  distrusts.  Their  virtues  are  indi- 
vidual, not  social,  and  every  effort  at  combined  action 
brings  out  their  vices.  Therefore  they  have  been 
passive  items  in  the  hands  of  King  and  Church  while 
the  monarchy  and  the  hierarchy  were  vigorous. 
When  the  life  ebbed  from  these  institutions  there  was 
nothing  to  take  their  place  except  the  absolute 
necessity  for  some  form  of  rule  among  gregarious  men. 
Therefore  a  Spanish  colony  fell  into  anarchy  qualified 
by  the  temporary  predominance  of  some  man  with  a 
stick.  The  tragedy  of  the  whole  race  at  home,  as  in 
the  Indies,  has  been  that  many  of  the  best  and  most 
honest  among  them  could  find  nothing  better  to  do 
than  to  fight  contumaciously  and  pitilessly  for  the 
only  kind  of  social  and  poHtical  principle  they  knew — 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

the  King  and  the  Faith — in  other  words,  for  the  dead 
and  the  dying.  Old  Spain  was  at  least  directly 
influenced  by  the  great  living  communities  about 
her  in  Europe.  In  the  isolation  of  the  kingdom 
of  New  Spain  there  was  nothing  to  counteract  the 
faults  of  the  race,  and  everything  to  exaggerate 
them. 

Education  could  hardly  be  expected  to  exist  in  such 
conditions.  There  were  universities  in  Mexico,  but 
they  were  limited  to  droning  over  the  scholastic 
philosophy  in  its  dotage.  A  few  exceptional  men 
here  and  there  might  apply  themselves  to  botany  or 
some  other  scientific  subject.  But  there  was  no 
training  for  the  community,  nor  even  for  a  class.  It 
would  have  been  no  great  evil  that  the  mass  of  the 
population  learnt  nothing  except  to  repeat  their 
catechism  and  "  Ave  Maria  "  by  rote,  if  those  who 
were  supposed  to  be  schooled  had  had  a  substantial 
education.  But  except  in  the  Jesuit  schools,  where 
the  upper  class  was  taught  some  Latin,  there  was 
nothing  beyond  an  endless  ringing  of  the  changes  on 
"  Ens  "  and  "  Essentia,"  a  perpetual  rattle  of  dis- 
putation over  unrealities,  in  phrases  which  the  Inquisi- 
tion had  tested  and  found  orthodox.  The  candidate 
for  a  licentiateship  of  laws  had  to  read  the  text-books 
and  codes,  at  least  after  a  fashion.  But  his  training 
was  also  one  in  mere  disputation  on  points  and  in 
terms  laid  down  for  him.  ^.The  debauching  loquacity 
of  the  modern  Spaniards  and  Spanish-Americans,  the 
deadly  readiness  of  all  of  them  to  pour  out  torrents 
of  grammatical  sentences  which  express  no  genuine 
conviction  and  mean  nothing,  and  the  predominance 
among  them  of  the  "  attorney  species  "  are  the  ruinous 
inheritance  left  by  generations  of  a  so-called  education 


1 8  DIAZ 

in  mere  gabble  to  the  exclusion  of  thought  and  of  the 
study  of  things? 

Where  in  all  this  conglomeration  of  fragments  were 
to  be  found  the  elements  of  a  polity  ?  Only  in  the 
royal  authority,  which  all  by  virtue  of  an  inherited 
instinct  revered  even  when  they  were  provoked  into 
resistance  by  a  personal  grievance.  Outbreaks  of 
disorder  were  not  uncommon  in  Spanish  America 
during  the  eighteenth  century.  A  vague  tendency  to 
think  that  the  land  belonged  to  those  born  in  it  was 
to  be  noted  from  time  to  time — the  forerunner  of  the 
revolt  which  began  in  1810.  But  these  outbreaks 
were  not  directed  against  the  monarchical  principle  of 
the  State.  Men  took  up  arms  and  rioted  when  a  trade 
monopoly  granted  by  the  King  became  intolerable. 
In  Mexico  city  there  was  one  triumphant  explosion 
when  a  reforming  viceroy  attempted  to  stop  the  sale 
of  "  pulque  "  in  the  interests  of  sobriety.  But  when 
the  grievance  was  removed  all  went  back  to  the  old 
order.  The  nature  of  these  transient  outbreaks  may 
be  illustrated  by  an  incident  which  occurred  some 
thirty  years  ago  in  Spain.  'It  was  a  year  of  drought, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  a  village  in  Valencia  were 
menaced  not  only  by  a  total  failure  of  their  harvest, 
but  by  the  drying  up  of  the  wells  of  drinking  water. 
Their  church  possessed  a  crucifix  of  peculiar  sanctity. 
It  was  taken  out  and  carried  through  the  fields  by  a 
procession  with  candles  burning  and  singing  of  hymns. 
No  rain  came.  At  last  on  the  third  or  fourth  day  of 
these  pious  exercises  the  villagers  became  overwrought. 
Being  now  worked  into  a  "  rabieta,"  a  spasm  of  mad 
rage,  they  stood  the  crucifix  upside  down  in  the  market 
place,  they  covered  it  with  filth,  they  kicked  it  and 
threw  stones  at  it,  they  abused  it  in  the  choicest  terms 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

of  Spanish  blasphemy,  which  is  not  mere  cursing  and 
swearing,  but  truly  blasphemous.  In  the  middle  of 
this  crazy  scene  down  came  the  rain  as  it  does  in 
those  parts,  advancing  in  sheets  and  spouts  and  hurl- 
ing the  dust  up  before  it.  And  then  the  people  saw 
how  useless  the  image  was,  and  they  were  prepared 
to  listen  to  a  Protestant  missionary  ?  Quite  the 
contrary.  The  people  of  that  village  only  concluded 
that  the  Lord  had  been  moved  to  pity  by  the  sight 
of  the  extremes  to  which  their  suffering  had  driven 
them  and  had  at  last  sent  the  rain.  They  were  more 
persuaded  of  the  miraculous  virtues  of  the  image  than 
they  were  before.  So  the  discontented  colonists  who 
forced  the  King  or  his  viceroy  to  give  way  remained 
as  convinced  as  they  ever  had  been  of  the  royal  good- 
ness 

But  now  suppose  that  the  belief  in  the  sanctity  of 
the  royal  authority — the  medium  which  held  together 
the  individuals,  classes,  and  races  which  made  up  the 
pudding-stone  of  a  Spanish  colony — began  itself  to 
disintegrate,  what  would,  what  must,  follow  ?  The 
whole  mass  would  have  of  course  crumbled,  and  when 
the  process  had  gone  far  enough  the  pebbles  or  flints 
once  embedded  in  the  worn-out  medium  would  sink 
into  a  heap.  And  that  is  precisely  what  happened  in 
Mexico.  Various  causes  had  been  at  work  all  through 
the  eighteenth  century  to  dissolve  the  bond.  There 
was  an  increasing  sense  of  grievance  in  the  Creole  and 
Mestizo  classes.  As  they  were  recruited  by  immigrants 
from  Old  Spain  and  grew  stronger,  they  began  to 
resent  the  exclusive  possession  of  office  by  the 
Peninsulares  and  the  insolence  of  the  official  class. 
It  was  a  common  observation  down  to  the  day  when 
Spain  lost  the  last  fragment  of  her  colonial  empire 

C   2 


20  DIAZ 

that  the  non-official  immigrants  soon  came  to 
sympathise  with  the  Creoles,  and  that  their  children 
were  Creoles  out  and  out.  The  official  Peninsulares 
were  not  only  harsh  administrators  and  generally 
corrupt,  but  they  were  socially  insolent.  In  the 
seventeenth  century  they  already  avowed  their 
doubts  whether  any  of  the  elements  of  the  native 
population  were  entitled  to  be  considered  as  rational 
beings  {gente  de  razon).  The  Creoles,  they  said,  sucked 
in  the  Indian  vices  with  the  milk  of  their  Indian  nurses. 
The  Mestizos  were  the  offspring  of  vicious  women — a 
bastard  race.  The  Indians  were  children.  Resent- 
ment of  this  official  insolence  began  to  extend  timidly 
to  the  royal  authority  itself.  Then  Charles  III. 
struck  a  terrible  blow  at  the  loyalty  of  the  leading 
Creoles  when  he  suppressed  the  Jesuits.  The  company 
in  Mexico,  as  elsewhere,  had  aimed  with  great  success 
at  monopolising  the  education  of  the  moneyed  classes. 
The  arbitrary  cruelty  of  the  treatment  meted  out  to 
them  shocked  their  old  pupils.  The  mass  of  the 
population  was  not  much  affected,  and  the  Jesuits 
had  many  enemies  among  the  bishops  and  the  other 
religious  orders  who  helped  to  destroy  them.  The 
King  had  ample  support  at  the  time,  but  the  sanctity 
of  the  whole  Church  suffered  by  this  brutal  crushing 
of  a  great  order,  and  the  King's  authority  was 
inseparable  from  that  of  the  Church.  Then  came  the 
example  of  the  revolt  of  the  English  plantations  and 
the  help  given  to  them  by  the  King  of  Spain  in  alliance 
with  France.  Wealthy  Mexicans  who  visited  Europe 
and  immigrants  from  Spain  began  to  spread  the  ideas 
of  the  French  fhilosophes.  The  Inquisition  strove 
to  exclude  the  writings  of  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Raynal. 
The  community  was  against  it,  and  the  ''  enlightened  " 


INTRODUCTORY  21 

officials  whom  Charles  III.  sent  out  were  no  friends 
to  the  Inquisition.  The  King  honestly  desired  to 
remove  the  worst  faults  of  his  colonial  administration. 
Something  was  done,  and  a  real  stimulus  was  given  to 
the  material  prosperity  of  the  colonists.  But  it  is  an 
old  observation  that  resentment  against  evils  always 
finds  expression  when  the  sufferers  are  beginning  to 
enjoy  relief.  Charles,  a  man  besotted  by  a  convic- 
tion of  the  divinity  and  omnipotence  of  his  office,  was 
always  sawing  the  branch  between  himself  and  the 
trunk  of  the  tree.  In  order  to  improve  his  means  of 
defending  his  colonies  against  British  attack  he  per- 
mitted the  formation  of  a  Creole  and  Mestizo  militia. 
Spanish  army  officers,  who  had  as  little  right  as  they 
well  could  have  to  look  down  on  any  kind  of  troops, 
laughed  at  the  ''  milicianos."  But  these  bodies  pro- 
vided the  framework  of  the  "  patriot  "  armies  of  the 
immediate  future. 

The  French  Revolution  re-echoed  in  the  New  World 
and  found  discontent  stirring  below  the  surface. 
There  was  still  no  actual  disloyalty  to  the  Crown. 
"  Viva  el  Rey  y  muera  el  mal  gobierno  "  ("  Long  live 
the  King  and  death  to  the  bad  government  ")  was  the 
first  watchword  of  the  insurgents  throughout  Spanish 
America.  In  the  King  there  was  no  help.  The 
wretched  exhibition  of  themselves  given  by  Charles  IV. 
and  his  family  covered  the  once  sacrosanct  royalty 
with  contempt.  Spain  was  dragged  along  by  France. 
War  with  England  cut  Mexico  off  from  the  peninsula. 
Unmistakable  signs  that  the  Spanish  rule  was  nearing 
its  end  began  to  appear.  One  of  the  later  viceroys, 
Iturrigaray,  entered  into  a  plot  with  the  Creoles  to 
establish  a  colonial  self-government.  The  system  of 
administration  elaborated  by  Charles  V.  and  Philip  II. 


22  DIAZ 

was  for  the  last  time  justified  of  its  children.     The 
audiencia  suppressed  the  viceroy  and  sent  him  back 
to  Spain,  where  he  died  in  prison.     When  Napoleon 
endeavoured  to  seize  Spain  in  1808  Mexico  remained 
loyal  to   Ferdinand  VII.     But  it  began  to  act  for 
itself,   and  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  its  inde- 
pendence.    Spain  had  no  troops  in  the  colony.     The 
armed  forces  were  composed  wholly  of  native  militia. 
The  old  colonial  Government  had  become  a  skeleton        1 
held  together  by  wire.     When  the  French  invaded      / 
Andalusia  in  18 10,  and  the  conquest  of  Spain  seemed      ' 
to  be  inevitable,  Mexico  might  very  well  have  fallen 
away  as  did  Buenos  Ayres.     It  remained  loyal  for 
another  ten  years  because  the  Creoles  and  Mestizos 
were  suddenly  threatened  by  a  revolt  of  the  Indians. 

The  explosion  was  directed,  indeed,  by  a  Creole  who   / 
was  acting  in  combination  with  other  men  of  his  own  ! 
class — the  priest  Hidalgo.     He  had  been  much  in-  • 
fluenced  by  the  philosophy  and  the  "  sensibility  "  of  i 
Rousseau.     He  had  worked  for  his  Indian  flock  and 
had  great  popularity  among  them.      Some  schemes 
which  he  framed  for  their  good  were  brutally  destroyed 
by  the  colonial  Government.     It  was  on  that  provoca- 
tion that  Hidalgo  began  to  organise  his  conspiracy. 
The  Government  got  wind  of  what  was  going  on  and 
made  some  arrests.     Hidalgo,  seeing  that  it  was  now 
or  never,  revolted  at  the  head  of  his  Indian  followers 
not   nominally   against   the    King,    but   against   the 
Administration.     What  was  to  have  been  a  general 
colonial  movement  became  a  race  conflict.     Hidalgo 
himself  went  through  the  evolution  familiar  enough 
in  the  terrorist  time  in  France.     In  the  passion  of  the 
struggle  and  in  rage  against  the  injustice  of  his  oppo-  ' 
nents  he  became  convinced  that  the  only  way  to    j\ 


INTRODUCTORY  23 

protect  the  oppressed  was  to  slay  the  oppressors.  ') 
His  philanthropy  turned  bloodthirsty,  and  he  led  his  ' 
Indian  followers  into  a  general  massacre  of  Creoles 
and  Mestizos.  In  the  presence  of  this  peril  the 
menaced  classes  rallied  to  the  audiencia  and  the  royal 
Government.  The  Indian  revolt  was  put  down  and 
Hidalgo  executed.  His  enemies  said  that  he  died 
asking  pardon  of  God  and  man  for  his  sin  in  letting  the 
mischief  loose.  It  is  equally  likely  that  in  the  reaction 
of  feeling  probable  in  so  emotional  a  man  he  made  this 
confession  of  sin,  or  that  his  enemies  invented  it  for 
him. 

Whatever  Hidalgo  may  have  said  or  felt,  it  is  only    | 
too  true  that  his  insurrection  was  the  beginning  of    ' 
infinite  misery  for  Mexico.     He  was  succeeded  as  a 
patriot  leader  by  another  priest,  the  Mestizo  Morelos.     \ 
When  he  too  was  put  down  and  executed,  other  chiefs 
were  found  to  continue  a  partisan  warfare  in  the     \ 
mountains  till  1820. 

The  legend  of  Mexican  history  is  that  this  struggle 
was  a  fight  for  freedom  against  Spanish  oppression. 
The  sober  truth  is  that  the  ten  years  from  18 10  to  1820 
were  filled  by  the  first  Mexican  Civil  War.  Spain 
could  for  long  send  no  troops,  and  she  never  sent  more 
than  a  few.  Her  resources  were  almost  wholly 
devoted  to  attempts  to  hold  or  to  reconquer  South 
America.  The  combatants  of  the  ten  years'  war  were 
Mexican  parties.  If  that  statement  is  disputed,  the 
proof  of  its  truth  can  be  conclusively  given  by  a  mere 
statement  of  the  circumstances  in  which  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  country  was  finally  declared. 

In  1820  a  Spanish  army,  which  had  been  collected 
near  Cadiz  for  transport  to  South  America,  revolted 
at  the  instigation  of  Liberal  oflftcers.     The  Constitu- 


24  DIAZ 

tion  drawn  up  by  the  Cortes  in  1812  during  the 
Peninsular  War  and  suppressed  by  Ferdinand  VII. 
was  restored.  Now  this  instrument  of  government 
was  odious  to  the  clergy  chiefly  because  the  men  who 
made  it  were  known  to  aim  at  the  secularisation  of 
the  Church  land.  So  far  the  higher  clergy  in  Mexico, 
who  were  generally  Peninsulares,  had  been  loyal, 
though  a  large  proportion  of  the  parish  priests,  who 
were  often  Mestizos,  and  the  friars  of  native  origin 
were  patriots.  But  when  they  found  themselves 
threatened  by  a  Radical  and  "  godless  "  Government 
in  Spain  the  higher  clergy  also  became  patriots.  In 
combination  with  the  Creole  military  leaders,  whose 
loyalty  had  worn  away  to  nothing,  they  proclaimed 
the  independence  of  Mexico.  The  Spanish  Govern- 
ment fell  without  a  blow.  A  few  soldiers  from  Old 
Spain  held  the  fortress  at  San  Juan  de  Ulloa  for  a 
time  simply  because  the  Mexicans  had  no  navaPforce, 
and  the  castle  stands  on  an  island  opposite  Vera  Cruz. 
But  the  viceroy  himself  had  to  sign  the  document 
which  announced  the  end  of  the  Government  he 
represented. 

If  the  Creole  landowners  had  possessed  any  of  the 
qualities  of  an  aristocracy  they  could  have  made  them- 
selves masters  of  Mexico  in  the  years  between  18 10 
and  1820.  But  they  were  a  mere  class  of  persons  of 
fine  manners  who  at  their  best  were  amiable  and 
admirable  in  their  family  relations,  while  at  their  worst 
they  were  debauched  and  addicted  to  gambling  to  the 
verge  of  insanity.  There  was  no  institution  in  Mexico 
except  the  Church,  and  that  also  was  divided  and 
lacking  in  faculty  for  government.  If  a  revolution 
is  the  substitution  of  one  Government  by  another, 
then  the  declaration  of  independence  did  not  accom- 


INTRODUCTORY  25 


.♦ 


plish  a  revolution  in  Mexico.  It  was  simply  a  formal 
recognition  of  the  already  patent  fact  that  the  only 
principle  of  government  known  to  the  Mexicans  of  all 
shades  was  dead,  and  that  nothing  was  left  save  the 
innate  gregarious  instincts  of  the  human  animal.  On 
that  foundation  a  new  social  and  political  order  was 
to  be  built!* 

The  thirty-five  years  which  passed  between  the 
declaration  of  the  independence  of  Mexico  and  the 
beginning  of  the  career  of  Porfirio  Diaz  cannot  be  said 
to  have  seen  even  the  first  steps  in  the  progress  of  the 
work.  They  were  full  of  mere  anarchy.  Presidents 
rose  and  fell  at  the  rate  of  about  one  a  year.  It 
could  not  well  have  been  otherwise.  No  Mexican  was 
any  longer  aware  of  a  reason  why  he  should  obey  what 
was  supposed  to  be  the  Government  for  one  moment  ' 
longer  than  he  saw  occasion,  or  than  he  was  restrained  I 
by  lack  of  means,  or  by  terror  of  instant  death,  from 
setting  out  to  become  himself  a  Government.  After 
the  ten  years  of  war,  between  i8io  and  1820,  the  land 
was  full  of  armed  factions.  They  had  a  free  field  in  | 
a  thinly-inhabited  country  full  of  mountains  which 
invited  the  guerrillero  and  the  bandit.  Even  if  a 
history  of  a  chronic  state  of  disorder  were  possible, 
this  is  not  the  place  to  make  the  attempt.^  But, 
when  we  look  steadily  across  the  confusion,  certain 
tendencies,  if  not  exactly  political  principles,  are  seen 
to  have  been  implied  in  the  conflicts  of  contending 
factions. 

The  words  "  Federalist  "  and  "  Centralist  "  which  / 
figure  largely  in  the  controversies  of  those  times  did 

^  The  reader  who  wishes  to  become  better  acquainted  with  the  barren 
contentions  of  little  self-seeking  men  may  be  referred  to  Vols.  VIII.  and  IX. 
of  "  The  History  of  the  Pacific  States,"  by  Mr.  Hubert  H.  Bancroft. 


26  DIAZ 

really  stand  for  something.  The  framers  of  the  first 
Mexican  Constitution  made  a  slavish  imitation  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  They  were  the 
Federalists.  From  the  beginning  there  were  Mexicans 
who  foresaw  that  this  form  of  government  would  not 
suit  their  country,  if  only  for  the  sufficient  reason  that 
there  were  in  Mexico  no  "  States."  Its  provinces 
were  not  political  entities,  each  with  its  own  history, 
character,  and  training  in  self-government,  as  were 
the  thirteen  British  colonies  which  combined  to  form 
the  Union.  These  critics  maintained  that  the  only 
government  the  Mexicans  understood  was  one  by  a 
strong  central  authority.  What  they  really  wanted 
was  a  continuation  of  the  Spanish  viceroyalty  and 
audiencia,  but  composed  of  Mexicans  working  in  the 
interests  of  Mexico.  Here  was  a  genuine  political 
issue  very  fit  to  be  settled  by  political  methods  and 
argument.  The  career  of  President  Diaz  goes  to  show 
that  these  dissenters,  who  were  known  as  Centra- 
listas,  were  right.  If  Mexico  could  have  produced 
Jays,  Jeffersons,  and  Hamiltons  they  would  in  all 
probability  have  written,  not  a  "  Federalista,"  but  a 
"  Centralista." 

The  issue  was  not  debated  politically,  but  was 
turned  into  a  downright  scufile  of  kites  and  crows. 
It  is  substantially  accurate  to  say  that  whoever  was 
at  the  head  of  affairs  for  the  time  being  (having  put 
himself  there  by  armed  revolt)  tended  to  be  "  Centra- 
lista  "  because  the  name  went  easily  with  the  widest 
possible  exercise  of  authority.  The  Spaniard  is 
naturally  "  mandonP  We  may  translate  the  word 
by  "  Jack  in  office,"  but  only  with  partial  truth. 
The  "  mandon  "  is  not  only  a  conceited  creature  who 
makes  the  most  of  his  office.     He  is  always  a  potential 


INTRODUCTORY  27 

tyrant  to  whom  no  words  come  so  easily  as  "  Aqui 
mando  yo  "  ("  I  command  here  "),  and  who  enforces 
obedience  by  the  most  brutal  or  even  bloodthirsty 
methods.     Every  "  mandon  "  is  persuaded  that  the 
whole  abstract  authority  of  the  State  resides  in  his 
person,   and   that   not   only  all  opposition,   but   all 
independence  of  judgment,  is  rebellion  to  be  punished 
by  death.     The  history  of  Mexico  is  full  of  bloodthirsty!  I 
"  Jacks  in  office."     But  a  perfect  readiness  to  suppress  \^ 
and  to  kill  is  not  enough  to  make  a  strong  Govern-  1 
ment.     It  is  quite  capable  of  promoting  sheer  anarchy   1 
by  provoking,  or  absolutely  terrifying,  men  into  armed  / 
resistance  for  their  safety's  sake.     Mexico  offered  a 
fine  field  for  insurrection.     The  natural  answer  to  the 
Centralist  "  mandon  "  was  the  provincial  Federalist, 
who  raised  the  standard  of  revolt,  of  course  in  the 
name  of  Freedom.     When  beaten  he  fled  into  exile 
if  he  escaped  being  shot.     When  he  was  victorious  he 
tended  to  become  Centralist  and  "  mandon." 

In  so  far  as  real  political  parties  existed  the  Centra- 
lists may  be  said  to  have  consisted  of  the  landowners 
of  Spanish  descent  and  the  Church,  which  was  natur- 
ally on  the  side  of  authority.  Now  there  were  certain 
conditions  which  did  tend  to  solidify  the  Mexican 
hurly-burly  into  a  fight  over  material  things.  The  old 
Spanish  rule,  working  by  class  and  private  laws  to 
divide  that  it  might  govern,  had  established  its  Fuero 
(forum)  Militar,  and  its  Fuero  Eclesiastico  (the  mili- 
tary and  the  Church  franchises).  The  reader  must 
remember  that  in  its  original  sense  the  word  "  militar  " 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  professional  soldier,  the 
member  of  a  standing  army.  The  Brazo  Militar  of 
the  mediaeval  Spanish  Cortes — the  Military  arm — ^was 
composed  of  the  nobles.     In  Mexico  the  landowners 


28  DIAZ 

had  been  assimilated  to  the  Brazo  Militar  of  Spain. 
They  were  justiciable  only  in  their  own  "  forum." 
But  so  great  is  the  power  of  a  name  that  the  army, 
because  it  is  "  militar  "  in  quite  another  sense,  had 
been  allowed  to  share  the  franchise  of  the  nobles  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  We  are  sufficiently  familiar  with 
the  rights  and  immunities  of  the  Church  in  our  own 
history  to  make  it  superfluous  to  explain  what  was 
meant  by  the  Fuero  Eclesiastico.  Mexican  Church- 
men claimed  all  that  the  Churchmen  who  resisted  our 
Henry  II.  had  called  their  rights,  and  they  actually 
possessed  their  privileges.  The  separation  from  Spain 
had  even  increased  their  power,  for  it  took  the  autho- 
rity of  the  King,  which  in  Spanish  America  was  great, 
from  off  their  necks.  Army  officers  and  priests  could 
not  even  be  sued  for  debt  except  in  their  own  courts.^ 
Army  and  Church  were  always  more  or  less  "  Cen- 
tralista."  Therefore  it  became  a  great  object  with  the 
Federalists  to  aboHsh  their  franchises.  As  the  Church 
was  immensely  rich,  owning,  it  was  calculated,  a  third 
of  all  the  wealth  of  Mexico,  hostility  to  its  legal  privi- 
leges inevitably  went  hand  in  hand  with  a  longing  to 
secularise  its  property.  The  conflict  had  risen  to  its 
acute  stage  when  Diaz  entered  public  life  as  a  follower 
of  Benito  Juarez. 

^  The  British  reader  may  be  surprised  to  be  told,  what  is  none  the  less  the 
fact,  that  these  class  franchises  survive  in  Spain  itself.  An  army  officer  can 
be  sued  for  debt  only  before  a  military  court.  A  very  few  years  ago  a 
retired  army  officer  who  had  committed  a  murder  in  very  horrible  circum- 
stances was  tried  by  a  miHtary  court  which  sentenced  him  to  death. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    BEGINNING    OF    A    CAREER 

While  the  day  on  which  he  could  begin  his  active 
career  was  approaching  Diaz  continued  to  work  at  the 
law,  taking  pupils  to  support  himself  and  his  mother. 
In  the  meantime  he  had  before  him  a  proof  that  men 
could  rise  to  power  by  the  pen  and  word  as  well  as  by 
the  sword  in  Mexico,  though  the  country  was  given  up 
to  military  violence.  There  also  the  story  of  Bertrand 
and  Raton  has  been  known  in  public  life.  The  craft 
of  the  "  attorney  species  "  has  not  seldom  made  a 
tool  of  the  mere  fighter.  In  after  years  and  when  he 
was  President  he  was  always  ready  to  confess  that  his 
first  "patron"  was  Don  Marcos  Perez^  a  pure-blooded 
Indian,  a  judge  and  a  professor  of  law  at  the  Insti- 
tute of  Oaxaca.  By  the  friendly  offices  of  Perez  he 
became  well  known  to  the  leader  whom  he  was 
destined  to  succeed  as  ruler  of  Mexico,  the  Zapoteca 
Indian,  Benito  Juarez,  who  had  risen  wholly  by  the 
way  of  the  law.  Juarez  had  been,  and  when  Diaz  first 
knew  him  was,  governor  of  the  State.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the^  foundation  of  the  power  of  a 
party  leader  in  Mexico  has  commonly  been  a  local 
influence.  He  becomes  what  is  known  in  the  slang 
of  Spanish  politics  as  a  "  cacique."  He  practises 
"  caciquismo,"  and  on  that  fulcrum  he  works  his 
lever.  The  cacique  and  his  caciquismo  are  not  of 
necessity  evils.  Given  a  sound  moral  atmosphere  and 
good  political  instincts,  and  there  can  be  no  better 


30  DIAZ 

taking-off  place  for  a  public  career  than  the  support  of 
a  man's  neighbours  in  his  native  place  or  his  chosen 
home.  Mr.  Chamberlain  might  quite  fairly  have  been 
said  to  have  been  cacique  in  Birmingham,  Pym  and 
Hampden  were  caciques  before  him,  and  when  Crom- 
well was  called  King  of  the  Fens  nothing  else  was 
meant.  But  when  the  moral  atmosphere  is  bad  and 
the  politics  are  faction  the  case  is  altered.  A  local 
leader  rises  by  intrigue,  corruption,  or  violence. 
Specimens  of  both  kinds  abounded  in  Mexico.  Many 
of  the  chiefs  who  figured  in  the  ever-recurring  crises 
of  the  chronic  anarchy  were  no  better  than  brigands 
who  levied  blackmail  in  money  or  votes  at  the  head  of 
their  following  of  "  plateados,"  so  called  because  their 
clothes  and  the  harness  of  their  horses  were  adorned 
with  silver  (^lata).  A  plateado  was  a  Claude  Duval 
highwayman,  or  gentleman  brigand,  as  distinguished 
from  a  low  footpad.  Intriguer  and  blackmailer  might 
unite  in  the  same  person. 

Juarez  is  allowed  to  have  gained  his  power  by 
exceptionally  fair  methods.  The  fact  that  he  de- 
spoiled the  Church  has  perhaps  created  a  prejudice  in 
his  favour  in  certain  quarters.  But  it  is  generally 
allowed  that  he  had  been  an  honest  lawyer,  that  his 
political  course  was  consistent,  and  that,  unlike  the 
majority  of  his  contemporaries,  he,  though  not 
indifferent  to  his  interests,  did  not  accumulate  a 
fortune  in  office.  His  Indian  blood  no  doubt  helped 
him,  but  it  was  a  legitimate  advantage.  The  Zapo- 
tecas  of  Oaxaca  had  not  been  degraded  to  the  miserable 
level  of  serfdom  as  the  native  tribes  of  Central  Mexico 
were.  They  were  hillmen,  robust  and  courageous — 
often  yeomen  landowners  working  for  themselves. 
Fr  ench  officers  who  campaigned  among  them  during 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        31 

the  "  intervention  "  found  them  less  servile  than  other 
Indians,  and  saw  in  them  a  better  appreciation  of  law 
and  order  and  common  honesty.  We  are  entitled  to 
believe  that  if  they  trusted  Juarez  they  did  so  for 
creditable  reasons  and  that  their  preference  was  to 
his  honour. 

In  the  company  of  these  Indians  Porfirio  found 
himself  happier  than  under  the  control  of  the  clerical 
authorities  of  the  seminary.  He  records  in  his  diary 
that  "  My  intellect  first  expanded  under  the  heat  of 
Liberal  principles,  and  I  developed  and  improved  in 
philosophical  studies." 

In  1854  Diaz  could  not  enjoy  the  advantage  of 
direct  personal  guidance  from  Juarez.  The  Governor 
of  Oaxaca  had  been  driven  into  exile  in  the  United 
States  by  the  "  mandon  "  who  was  then  at  the  head 
of  the  Government,  so  called,  of  Mexico.  This  was 
the  once  notorious  and,  if  he  had  not  been  so  greedy 
and  so  capable  of  brutality,  the  amusing  Antonio 
Lopez  de  Santa  Ana.  This  personage  was  the  per- 
fection of  his  type.  He  had  the  dignified  personal 
appearance,  the  grave  gesture,  the  innate  faculty  for 
bearing  himself  with  an  air  of  good  manners,  which  in 
the  men  of  Spanish  race  (he  was  a  Creole)  often  cover 
the  most  complete  intellectual  and  moral  nullity. 
There  was  nothing  in  his  handsome  head  save  the  kind 
of  cleverness  which  can  be  wholly  disassociated  from 
judgment.  In  his  character  there  were  vanity,  greed, 
and  an  element  of  animal  courage  which  increased  his 
powers  for  mischief.  In  1853,  when  Mexico  was  smart- 
ing from  the  disasters  of  the  war  with  the  United  States 
and  was  sick  of  incapable  anarchists,  he  had  been 
invited  to  make  himself  Dictator  in  the  wild  hope  that 
he  would  give  the  tortured  country  its  long-desired  good 


32 


DIAZ 


government.  He  had  never  shown  the  least  proof  oi 
ability  to  satisfy  that  v/ish,  but  the  others  had  been 
every  whit  as  bad,  and  none  of  them  had  lost  a  leg 
in  fight  against  a  foreign  enemy.  Now  Santa  Ana 
had,  and  on  the  strength  of  that  superiority  he  had  been 
accepted  as  Dictator  with  the  quality  of  "  Highness." 
In  some  villages  he  was  even  proclaimed  as  the  Em- 
peror Antonio  I.  A  hankering  after  monarchy  had 
never  died  out  in  Mexico  among  those  who  were  more 
concerned  to  enjoy  the  protection  of  a  strong  Govern- 
ment than  to  upset  whatever  Government  there  was 
for  their  own  advantage.  Once  in  the  saddle  he 
applied  the  only  methods  of  administration  he  under- 
stood— suppressions  and  military  executions.  He 
quarrelled  with  some  of  those  who  helped  him  to  rise, 
accusing  them,  truly  enough  no  doubt,  of  corruption, 
and  driving  all  opponents  out  of  the  country  as  far 
as  he  could.  The  familiar  reaction  followed.  A 
Centralist  was  hectoring  in  the  capital.  The 
Federalists  took  up  arms  in  the  outlying  provinces. 
The  first  blow  which  Diaz  struck  in  a  civil  war  was 
given  in  opposition  to  Santa  Ana. 

In  1854  his  Highness  the  Dictator  was  busy  putting 
all  dissentients  within  his  reach  under  lock  and  key. 
The  friends  of  the  exiled  Juarez  were  the  natural 
victims  of  these  measures  of  precaution.  No  one  of 
them  was  more  distinctly  marked  out  for  arrest  than 
Don  Marcos  Perez,  and  he  was  accordingly  confined  in 
a  tower  of  the  convent  of  San  Domingo.  The  Dic- 
tator's vigilance  was  not  unreasonable,  for  already  the 
Liberal  opponents  of  his  rule  were  in  arms  in  the  Mix- 
teca  hill  country  to  the  west  of  the  city  of  Oaxaca 
under  the  command  of  one  Herrera.  The  mass  of 
townsmen  in  Mexico  habitually  behave  as  our  own 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        33 

ancestors    did    in    the    Wars    of    the    Roses.     They 
recognise  the  armed  man  who  is  in  possession  for  the 
time  being,  reserving  their  right  to  go  over  to  the  other 
side  if  only  it  can  make  a  successful  forcible  entry. 
Political  partisans  who  are  temporarily  reduced  to 
silence  by  hostile  force  within  the  city  plot  to  intro- 
duce their  own  friends  from  the  outside.     At  such 
times  those  who,  like  Don  Marcos  Perez,  are  "  carac- 
terizados  " — that  is  to  say,  marked  men — must  expect 
to  be  subjected  to  precautionary  arrest.   At  such  times, 
too,  young  and  active  men  like  Porfirio  Diaz  earn  the 
good-will  of  the  side  they  elect  to  fight  for  by  adven- 
turing to  keep  up  communications  between  the  plotter 
within  and  the  warrior  without  the  walls.     The  future 
President  began  his  career  by  a  feat  which  would  be 
quite  in  place  in  the  biography  of  Chicot.     We  have 
the  story  told  in  the  future  President's  own  words.^ 

He  tells  how  when  Don  Marcos  was  arrested  the 
"  fiscal "  (i.e.^  public  prosecutor),  Pascual  Leon,  was 
instructed  to  prepare  the  indictment.  Now  it  hap- 
pened that  Sefior  Leon  owed  money  to  Diaz  and  was 
tardy  in  his  payments.  The  creditor  had  therefore  a 
good  right  to  drop  in  at  the  fiscal's  office,  avowedly  in 
pursuit  of  the  debt,  but  with  other  aims,  as  he  plainly 
says.  Don  Pascual  avoided  the  unwelcome  visit,  and 
Diaz  was  left  alone  for  a  space.  All  is  fair  in  love  and 
politics.     The  fiscal  in  the  hurry  of  his  retreat  had 


1  I  quote  from  the  official  biography  written  by  Dr.  Fortunate  Hernandez. 
"  Un  Pueblo,  un  Siglo  y  un  Hombre  "  (**  A  Man,  a  Century  and  a  People  ") 
(Mexico,  1909).  This  is  an  official  book  published  in  reply  to  "  Porfirio 
Diaz,  la  Evolucion  de  su  Vida  "  ("  the  Evolution  of  this  Life  ")  (New  York, 
1908),  by  Don  Rafael  de  Zayas  Enriquez,  a  decidedly  candid  friend.  Dr. 
Hernandez  says  that  he  takes  this  and  many  other  passages  from  the 
**  unpublished  work  "  printed  by  Don  Matias  Romero  "  in  the  same  simple, 
concise  and  veracious  form  in  which  General  Diaz  dictated  it  to  the  short- 
hand writer." 


34  DIAZ 

left  his  papers  lying  on  his  desk.  Porfirio's  legal 
education  qualified  him  to  select  those  which  were  best 
worth  looking  at.  In  a  very  few  minutes  he  had  made 
a  number  of  notes  Hkely  to  be  useful  to  Don  Marcos. 
The  question  was  how  to  convey  them  to  him. 

The  prisoner  was  confined  in  the  monastery  of  San 
Domingo.  His  cell  was  in  the  lock-up  of  the  building 
wherein  delinquent  friars  were  shut  up.  This  house 
of  correction,  known  as  the  turret  {torre cilia) ^  pro- 
jected from  the  main  building  into  the  yard  of  the 
sacristy.  It  was  lower  than  the  body  of  the  monastery. 
The  walls  were  thick.  The  cell,  three  metres  long  by 
two  wide,  had  a  door  with  a  wicket  in  it  through 
which  a  prisoner  could  be  watched,  and  a  window 
high  up  on  one  side,  barred  heavily  in  the  middle  of 
the  thickness  of  the  wall.  The  cell  was  in  the  top 
storey  of  the  torrecilla,  and  below  was  a  door  opening 
on  the  courtyard.  Sentries  were  posted  inside  both 
at  the  door  of  the  cell  and  at  that  which  gave  on  to 
the  yard.  The  monastery  was  occupied  by  a  detach- 
ment of  Santa  Ana's  partisans.  There  was  only  one 
way  of  communicating  with  Don  Marcos,  and  that  was 
by  dropping  on  to  the  azotea  (the  flat  roof  of  the  turret) 
and  then  lowering  oneself  to  the  level  of  the  window. 
The  sill  was  broad,  and  whoever  could  reach  it  could 
find  a  footing  on  it  and  steady  himself  by  holding  the 
bars.  There  was  a  shutter  on  the  inside  of  the  window, 
but  it  had  an  opening  at  the  top.  In  order  to  get 
at  the  azotea  of  the  turret  it  was  first  necessary  to 
reach  the  roof  of  the  monastery.  To  come  at  the 
higher  roof  it  was  necessary  to  climb  the  outer  wall 
of  the  garden  and  then  climb  over  certain  lower 
outbuildings.  This  was  the  adventure  reserved  for 
Porfirio. 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        35 

He  might  have  been  unable  to  achieve  it  single- 
handed,  but  he  had  the  best  and  most  trustworthy  of 
comrades  in  his  brother  Felix,  now  and  at  all  times 
till  death  divided  them.  Felix,  commonly  known  by 
his  nickname  "  El  Chato  "  {i,e.,  ''  Flatnose  "),  had 
always  been  the  comrade  of  Porfirio  in  every  escapade 
or  hunting  excursion  in  the  Sierra.  They  were  both 
athletes  and  cragsmen.  The  feat  presented  no  more 
difficulties  than  were  sufficient  to  stimulate  them. 
With  a  well-tested  lasso,  hemp  sandals  on  foot,  or 
barefoot,  they  could  surely  reach  the  highest  roof,  and 
once  there  the  rest  was  plain  sailing,  on  a  conveniently 
dark  night. 

The  time  was  chosen,  and  under  cover  of  darkness 
the  brothers  reached  the  four-metre-high  garden  wall. 
One  standing  and  the  other  climbing  on  his  shoulders, 
the  thatched  covering  (or  barda)  of  the  wall  (it  was,  one 
gathers,  built  of  adobe,  mere  sun-dried  brick)  was  soon 
reached.     Whichever  got  up  first  held  a  rope  for  the 
other.     Felix  dropped  down  to  scout  for  a  possible 
sentry  in  the  garden.     None  were  stationed  outside 
the  building,  a  fact  which  does  no  credit  to  the  officer 
in  command.     Then  the  way  to  the  roof  of  the  monas- 
tery bakery  along  the  barda  was  fiat  and  safe.     The 
bakers  were  at  work  and  were  singing  to  lighten  toil. 
"  Quien  canta  sus   males  espanta,"  which  may  be 
rendered  by  "  He  who  trills  scares  away  his  ills,"  is  a 
sound  old   Spanish  proverb.     The  noise  they  were 
making    drowned    all    others    for    the    bakers.     The 
brothers  passed  unheard  from  the  roof  of  the  bakery 
to  the  roof  of  the  kitchen  (then  empty),  thence  to  the 
roof  of  the  quarters  occupied  by  the  provincial,  the 
superior  of  the  house.     From  a  small  kitchen  stand- 
ing there  it  was  but  one  pull  up  more  to  the  monastery 

D    2 


36  DIAZ 

roof.  The  climb  was  no  obstacle  to  men  accustomed 
to  use  the  lasso.  The  noose  was  deftly  tossed  over 
some  solid  projection.  One  held  the  rope  while  the 
other  swarmed  up.  Whoever  was  up  first  put  his 
back  into  it  to  pull  up  the  other.  The  President  uses 
the  very  idiom.  "  Haciendo  cuadril,"  he  says.  Now 
the  "  cuadril "  is  the  haunch  bone  of  an  animal. 
Hacer  cuadril  is  to  plant  the  heels  firm  and  pull  with 
weight  and  muscle,  in  the  language  of  the  muleteers. 
The  mule  can  show  them  how  to  do  it  when  in  one 
of  his  frequent  fits  of  obstinacy. 

Sentries  were  stationed  on  the  roof,  but  they  proved 
no  obstacle.  Porfirio  and  his  brother  learnt  of  their 
existence,  not  by  seeing  them,  but  by  the  sound  of 
their  voices  as  they  called  one  another  up,  "  Centinela, 
alerta  "  ("Watchman,  watch").  But  if  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  call  keeps  the  men  awake  at  their  posts  it 
tells  a  listener  where  they  are  and  where  he  must  go 
to  avoid  them.  No  sentry  was  posted  on  the  roof  of 
the  turret.  Those  who  were  on  the  roof  of  the  main 
building  were  probably  squatting  in  corners  out  of 
the  wind  wrapped  in  blankets.  For  that  or  for  some 
other  reason  they  kept  so  little  watch  that  the  brothers 
could  untie  a  long  rope  fastened  to  the  clapper  of  the 
convent  bell  and  tie  it  to  a  battlement.  This  was  to 
provide  themselves  with  an  alternative  line  of  escape 
if  the  alarm  were  given  below  and  their  retreat  by  the 
garden  side  were  cut  off. 

They  dropped  quietly  on  to  the  solid  roof  of  the 
turret,  and  while  El  Chato  watched  above,  Porfirio 
was  lowered  by  the  lariet  they  brought  with  them  to 
the  level  of  the  cell  window.  A  Latin  phrase  whis- 
pered through  the  airhole  in  the  shutter  told  Don 
Marcos  that  a  friend  was  at  hand.     Standing  on  the 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        37 

window  cill  and  gripping  the  bars,  Porfirio  gave  his 
news  to  the  prisoner  and  heard  his  answers.  The 
President  does  not  report  the  matter  of  their  talk, 
but  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  it  had  reference  to  more 
than  the  law  papers  of  Don  Pascual.  Messages  were 
sent  to  friends  outside.  Then  the  adventurers 
returned  as  they  came  after  replacing  the  bell  rope. 
And  the  feat  was  repeated  for  three  nights.  How 
they  contrived  to  free  the  lasso  when  they  had 
lowered  themselves  by  it  on  their  return  is  a  question 
which  the  reader  may  ask,  but  it  is  one  for  which  there 
is  no  answer.  The  services  of  a  friend  inside  would 
account  for  all,  but  none  is  mentioned.  One  thing  is 
certain,  and  it  is  that  no  man  who  rose  to  be  ruler 
of  a  State  in  the  nineteenth  century,  outside  of  the 
adventurous  world  of  Spanish  America,  could  boast 
of  such  a  feat. 

Though  the  matter  of  these  conversations  is  not 
reported,  we  may  be  tolerably  sure  that  it  had  refer- 
ence to  a  plot  for  handing  over  Oaxaca  to  the  oppo- 
nents of  Santa  Ana,  who  in  January,  1854,  had  drawn 
up  the  Plan  of  Ayutla,  so  called  from  the  place  where 
it  was  proclaimed.     It  was  one  of  a  long  series  framed 
to  secure  the  future  good  government  of  Mexico.     The 
Dictator,  though  he  was  beginning  to  be  hard  pressed 
from  all  sides,  held  his  ground  as  yet.     In  December 
of  that  year,  being  perhaps  inspired  by  the  recent 
shining  example  of  Napoleon  III.,  Santa  Ana  called 
for  a  plebiscite  in  which  the  free  and  independent 
voters  of  Mexico  might  decide  whether  or  no  they 
preferred    to    be    regenerated    by    him.     On    these 
occasions,  or  their  like,  the  line  taken  by  respectable 
people  in  Spanish  and  Portuguese  America  is  one  with 
the  answer  of  the  Oxford  undergraduate  who,  when 


38 


DIAZ 


asked  to  sign  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  replied  cheer- 
fully, ''  Oh  !  yes,  or  forty  if  you  hke."  ^ 

The  President  tells  us  that  until  the  very  day  of  the 
voting  he  was  not  sure  whether  he  would  ''  charac- 
terise "  himself  by  voting  openly  against  Santa  Ana 
or  be  content  with  abstaining.  The  offhand  remark 
of  a  friend  that  abstention  was  the  course  which  would 
naturally  be  taken  by  those  who  were  afraid  stung  his 
spirit.  The  friend — whose  name,  Francisco  de  Enciso, 
deserves  to  be  recorded — must  have  part  of  the 
credit  for  the  bold  act  which  marked  Diaz  at  least  in 
the  local  world  of  Oaxaca  as  an  intrepid  partisan.    In 

^  It  happened  to  me  some  years  ago  to  travel  by  sea  from  Santos  in  Brazil 
to  Buenos  Ayres  with  a  very  well  bred  and  intelligent  Argentine  man  of 
business.  In  answer  to  a  question  of  mine  concerning  a  political  matter, 
he  replied  politely  that  he  took  no  interest  in  it  whatever.  When  a  young 
man  and  in  the  illusions  of  credulous  youth  he  had  shared  in  a  political 
movement,  which  of  course  entailed  fighting.  When  it  was  over  he  reflected 
that  he  had  been  very  young,  very  foolish  to  risk  his  hfe  for  the  sake  of  a 
gang  of  intriguers  who  meant  no  good  to  anyone  but  themselves.  Since 
then  he  had  left  politics  alone.  Another  Argentine  of  the  same  stamp  told . 
me,  smiling  the  same  smile,  and  making  the  same  indication  of  the  shrug  of 
the  shoulders,  a  barely  perceptible  movement,  that  a  shower  of  rain  (he 
was  a  cattle  breeder,  an  "  estanciero,"  and  the  country  was  suffering  from 
drought)  was  of  infinitely  greater  importance  than  any  Presidential  election. 
The  profound  mistrust  which  Spanish-Americans  of  good  social  position 
and  honourable  personal  character  feel  for  all  politics  may  have  had  a  share 
in  the  reserve  of  both  these  gentlemen,  though  they  trust  us  more  than  they 
do  most  men,  for  they  rely  on  our  honour  ("  la  palabra  Inglesa  "),  a  confi- 
dence which  for  us  is  a  great  asset.  Yet  my  acquaintances  were  really 
stating  a  point  of  view.  The  respectable  Spanish-American  acts  very  much 
like  the  Arab  quoted  by  Mr.  Kinglake.  When  his  burnos  becomes  intolerably 
verminous  he  puts  it  on  an  ant-hill  and  the  ants  eat  the  pest.  So  in  Spanish 
America,  when  the  politicians  in  office  go  too  far,  the  moneyed  men  who 
suffer  too  much  provide  this  or  the  other  military  politician  out  of  office  with 
the  means  to  make  a  "  pronunciamiento."  They  finance  a  revolution.  The 
Arab  can  shake  the  ants  off  when  they  have  done  their  work,  but  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  shake  off  the  politicians.  This  attitude  of  the  industrious  non- 
political  world  of  Spanish  America  must  be  borne  in  mind  if  we  wish  to 
understand  how  so  much  bad  government  has  been  tolerated  ;  why  revolu- 
tions have  been  so  common  ;  and  also  why,  in  spite  of  bad  government  and 
revolutions,  these  countries  have  grown  in  material  prosperity  and  increased 
in  population.  The  political  strife  is  largely  a  game  played  by  a  class,  and 
the  working  community  goes  on  its  way,  leaving  the  chiefs  and  swordsmen 
to  fight  among  themselves. 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        39 

the  heat  of  his  resolution  he  came  to  the  room  where 
the  book  for  recording  the  votes  was  lying  open,  and 
there  with  his  own  hand,  and  avowing  his  deed  in  a 
loud  voice,  gave  his  vote  for  General  Alvarez,  "  the 
hero  of  Ayutla." 

The  next  step  was  to  hurry  from  the  room  and  the 
town.  Indeed,  he  received  a  warning  note  from 
another  friend,  one  Maldonado,  telling  him  that  the 
authorities  were  already  talking  of  his  arrest.  A  third 
friend,  a  member  of  the  dominant  faction,  warned  him 
verbally  in  the  streets  to  be  off.  The  wine,  in  fact, 
was  now  drawn  and  must  be  drunk.  Nor  was  Porfirio 
anywise  unwilling  to  do  what  was  needful.  An  open 
display  of  preparations  for  flight  would  perhaps  have 
hurried  his  arrest.  He  had  to  get  on  horseback 
without  letting  the  enemy  see  what  he  was  preparing 
to  do.  No  great  fortune  is  required  to  keep  a  saddle 
horse  in  Mexico,  and  he  had  one.  Wearing  a  decep- 
tive air  of  indifference,  he  led  his  horse  unsaddled  to 
the  water  outside  the  town.  A  friend  hid  saddle  and 
bridle  in  a  buck-basket  and  sent  them  down  to  the 
water  covered  by  clothes  as  for  the  wash.  Then 
Porfirio  saddled  and  rode  off  to  join  the  Indian 
Herrera,  who  with  a  small  and  ill-armed  band  of 
Indians  was  already  in  arms  for  the  cause  in  the  neigh- 
bouring hills.  It  was  not  unlike  an  incident  in  a 
story  by  Mayne  Reid,  but  then  the  Captain  wrote 
about  Mexico  and  knew  it  well.  And  now  Diaz  was 
fairly  launched  on  the  career  which  was  to  make  him 
master  of  the  Republic,  and  earn  him  the  respect  and 
confidence  of  the  statesmen  of  Europe  and  America. 

The  first  weeks  of  his  new  life  were  more  arduous 
than  successful.  Santa  Ana's  party  was  strong  enough 
to  break  up  Herrera's  band.     Diaz  had  to  take  to 


40 


DIAZ 


hiding,  but  the  tide  was  going  against  the  Dictator, 
and  the  partisans  of  the  plan  of  Ayutla  were  able  to 
get  possession  of  the  city  of  Oaxaca.  A  redistribution 
of  offices  naturally  ensued,  and  Diaz  was  named  sub- 
prefect  of  the  district  of  Ixtlan.  It  was  a  small  post 
given  as  a  beginning,  and  was  to  all  appearances  not  a 
promising  one.  The  Indians  of  Ixtlan  were  considered 
to  be  of  a  very  unmartial  character,  so  much  so  that 
they  were  exempted  from  military  levies  as  being  of 
no  use. 

Every  Mexican  armed  force  consists  of  two  ele- 
ments— the  directing  body  of  fighting  politicians,  or 
mere  brigands,  and  the  rank  and  file  of  Indians.     The 
latter  are  simply  pressed.     Every  political  party  has 
at  one  time  or  another  promised  to  give  up  the  leva 
{i.e.,  levy)  of  Indians  and  replace  it  by  a  fair  con- 
scription.    No  party  has  ever  kept  the  promise.     The 
Indians  are  too  broken,  too  cowed,  too  torpid,  and  too 
divided  to  resist.     They   submit,   and  their  women 
come  with  them  to  forage,  cook,  carry  burdens,  and 
provide  the  only  army  service  corps  which  Mexican 
armies  have  possessed.     A  Mexican  army  is  in  fact  a 
temporary  artificial  tribe  which  camps  or  marches 
with  its  swarm  of  women  and  children.     So  long  as 
they  are  paid  and  fed,  these  Indians  obey  and  show  a 
good  deal  of  passive  courage.     When  not  paid  or  fed 
they  desert.     They  pass  over  in  masses  from  the  losing 
to  the   winning   chief.     A   Mexican   victory  usually 
meant  the  incorporation  of  the  mass  of  the  beaten  side 
in  the  ranks  of  the  victorious  army.     The  directing 
element  of  the  beaten  side,  the  officers,  were   shot 
wholesale  after  the  battle.     With  such  soldiers  actions 
tended  to  be  fought  at  very  long  ranges,  and  the  result 
was  reached  through  desertion,  and  not  by  blows. 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        41 

The  Mexican  of  all  shades  can  fight  fiercely  in  certain 
circumstances,  or  when  his  passions  are  aroused.    But 
he  fights  best  behind  stone  walls,  or  in  trenches,  where 
his   Indian  passivity  enables  him  to  endure  much 
hammering  without  a  sense  of  excessive  strain  on  the 
nerves.     As  for  passion  :   what  passion  can  a  pressed 
Indian  feel  for  contending  political  generals  and  poli- 
tical terms  which  are  to  him  meaningless  ?  He  suffers 
patiently  when  he  cannot  desert,  and  will  meet  death 
in  the  shape  of  a  military  execution  with  an  air  of 
complete  indifference.     M.  de  Keratry,  who  served  in 
the  French  "  contra-guerrillas  "  during  the  Maximilian 
adventure,  writes  as  if  he  had  been  shocked  by  what 
seemed  to  him  the  brutal  callousness  of  the  Mexican 
guerrilleros  of  Indian  blood  whom  he  saw  shot  in  large 
numbers  by  order  of  the  redoubtable  Colonel  du  Pin. 
It  will  be  seen  that  to  be  appointed  sub-prefect  of 
a  district  where  the  Indians — the  Indiada  in  Mexican 
phrase-#-are   of  such   notoriously  poor   quality  that 
nobody  had  a  wish  for  their  services -was  no  great 
promotion.     And  Diaz  was  soon  called  upon  to  bring 
help  to  the  party.     The  Plan  of  Ayutla  included  the 
abolition  of  the  Fuero  Militar  and  the  Fuero  Eclesias- 
tico.     When  the  Republicans,  as  the  opponents  of  his 
Highness  the  Dictator  called  themselves  par  excellence ^ 
gained  possession  of  the  city,  they  of  course  proclaimed 
the  Plan.     The  officers  of  the  4th  Regiment  of  Horse, 
and  those  of  the  loth  of  Foot,  which  were  stationed 
in  Oaxaca,  were  offended  at  the  prospect  of  the  loss  of 
their  privileges,  and  on  second  thoughts  reproclaimed 
for   Santa   Ana.      The  Republicans  were  driven  out. 
Diaz  was  called  upon  to  come  to  the  help  of  his  friends 
with  the  Indiada  of  Ixtlan.     The  enemy  was  for  the 
moment  too  strong  for  them,  and  Diaz  found  himself 


42  DIAZ 

compelled  to  go  back  to  his  district  and  disband  the 
Indians  he  had  pressed.  But  this  eclipse  did  not  last 
long.  Santa  Ana's  folly  was  ruining  him,  and  he  was 
soon  in  flight.  The  Republicans  recovered  Oaxaca. 
Juarez  came  back  as  governor  after  a  period  of  semi- 
starvation  in  the  United  States. 

He  and  his  colleagues  of  the  Republican  party 
now  set  to  work,  to  organise  their  followers,  who  had 
hitherto  been  mere  guerrillero  bands,  into  a  National 
Guard  for  the  purpose  of  swamping  the  regular  army. 
Hereupon  the  professional  army  officers,  some  of  whom 
had  acted  against  Santa  Ana,  joined  forces  in  a  body 
with  the  equally  menaced  Church.  And  now  began 
a  fair  fight  on  a  true  political  issue.  On  one  side  were 
the  Liberals,  intent  on  an  abolition  of  military  and  t 
clerical  privileges,  and  on  the  other  were  the  menacedi 
army  officers  and  priests  who  constituted  the  Reaction.  ' 
The  place  of  Porfirio  Diaz  was  with  the  former. 
Juarez,  we  are  told,  had  begun  by  offering  him  a 
major's  commission  in  the  National  Guard  about  to 
be  formed.  He  declined  the  offer  on  the  modest 
ground  of  unfitness,  and  preferred  to  remain  as  sub- 
prefect  of  Ixtlan.  As  he  did  actually  accept  a  com- 
mission as  captain  in  the  National  Guard  in  December, 
1856,  we  may  assume  that  he  was  not  held  back  by 
diffidence  alone  from  taking  service  at  a  slightly, 
earlier  date.  His  native  sagacity  must  have  shown! 
him  that  the  foundation  of  real  power  in  Mexico  is  a'' 
local  influence.  He  remained  in  his  district  to  win  it, 
and  he  gave  his  first  proof  of  his  capacity  to  manage 
his  countrymen  by  obtaining  an  appreciable  amount 
of  useful  service  in  the  field  from  the  Indians  of  Ixtlan. 
From  that  fact  we  may  perhaps  conclude  that  if  they 
had  been  of  small  military  value  hitherto  the  reason 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        43 

was  not  so  much  that  they  were  more  pusillanimous 
than  others  of  their  race,  but  that  they  were  more 
recalcitrant  to  the  press.  It  may  be  remembered 
that  the  parents  of  Diaz  had  lived  for  years  in  the 
Sierra  de  Ixtlan,  and  he  had  relations  there. 

Without  undertaking  to  go  into  details  of  the  con- 
fused period  of  the  overthrow  of  Santa  Ana,  we  must 
note  rapidly  that  the  victorious  Republicans  obtained 
possession  of  the  capital.  Their  first  President  was 
^^Ivaxez^the  hero  of  the  Plan  of  Ayutla.  He  proved  . 
but  a  transient  President,  and  was  quite  out  of  place  ' 
when  he  was  no  longer  playing  the  guerrillero  on  a 
hillside.  Conxonfort  succeeded  him  and  formed  a 
Ministry  in  which  Juarez  was  Minister  of  Grace  and 
Justice.  The  career  of  Comonfort  is  unique  among 
Mexican  Presidents,  for  he  ended  by  making  a  pro- 
nunciamiento  against  his  own  administration.  He 
was  a  moderate  Conservative  who  had  been  driven  to 
join  the  Liberals  by  opposition  to,  or  fear  of,  Santa 
Ana.  His  conduct  shows  that  he  was  prepared  to  go 
a  certain  way  with  them  in  reform,  for  he  allowed  his 
Minister  of  Grace  and  Justice  to  pass  the  law  called 
after  him  "  Leyjuarez/^'  which  abolished  the  Military — 
and^Eccl^esiastical^ueros^  But  it  would  appear  that 
when  reform  was  seen  to  be  developing  into  a  con- 
fiscation of  the  Church's  property  Comonfort  became 
frightened.  He  turned  over  to  the  Reaction,  was 
overwhelmed  in  the  confusion  he  created,  and  fled 
abroad.  We  may  apply  to  him  the  scoffing  lines 
written  on  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  Louis  de  Noailles. 

"  Cy  git  Louis  cahi  caha 
De  oui  et  non  s'entortilla, 
Puis  dit  ceci,  puis  dit  cela, 
Perdit  la  tete  et  s'en  alia." 


44  DIAZ 

The  united  Clerical  and  Military  parties  obtained 
possession  of  the  city  of  Mexico  and  the  central  mass 
of  the  country.  Juarez,  who  as  Minister  of  Grace 
and  Justice  was  also  President  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
and  by  the  Mexican  Constitution  entitled  to  replace 
the  President  of  the  Republic  in  case  of  death  or 
disappearance,  was  recognised  as  his  successor  by  the 
Republicans.  He  made  his  way  through  various 
hazards  to  Veracruz,  from  whence  he  directed  the 
ensuing  three  years'  strife  with  the  Reaction,  or 
Conservative  alliance,  headed  by  that  Miramon,  who 
was  destined  to  be  shot  by  the  side  of  the  Archduke 
Maximilian.  Partly  because  he  had  the  support  of 
the  United  States,  which  recognised  him  and  allowed 
its  naval  officers  to  intervene  in  his  favour,  but  not  a 
little  because  his  position  at  Veracruz,  the  chief  port 
of  Mexico,  enabled  him  to  intercept  the  customs 
revenue,  Juarez  was  first  able  to  hold  his  ground  and 
then  to  advance  against  the  capital. 

While  the  general  struggle  was  running  its  course  in 
the  centre  and  north  Porfirio  Diaz  was  steadily 
fighting  for  the  common  cause  in  the  south,  and  was 
incidentally  qualifying  himself  to  succeed  Juarez  as 
"  cacique  "  in  Oaxaca.  The  company  of  National 
Guards  he  commanded  was  raised  in  Ixtlan,  where  the 
hillmen  would  follow  him,  but  nobody  else.  His 
party  was  predominant  in  the  State  till  August  of 
1857,  when  the  Conservatives,  led  by  a  Spaniard  of 
old  Spain,  Cobos,  who  had  carried  a  natural  faculty 
for  guerrillero  warfare  to  Mexico,  burst  in  on  them  from 
the  north,  and  beat  them  badly  at  Ixcapa.  In  this 
action  Diaz  was  severely  wounded  by  a  musket  bullet 
in  the  leg.  The  wound  laid  him  up  for  four  months, 
and  the  bullet  was,  for  lack  of  a  competent  surgeon, 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        45 

not  extracted  till  1859.  It  was  then  taken  out  at  La 
Ventosa  by  an  American  naval  surgeon  whose  ship  was 
protecting  the  workmen  engaged  in  laying  a  road 
across  the  isthmus  of  Tehuantepec.^ 

Even  before  he  was  cured  he  had  resumed  service. 
It  is  characteristic  of  Mexican  history  that  his  chief 
in  this  part  of  his  life  was  the  Mejia  who  made  a  third 
with  Maximilian  and  Miramon  before  the  firing  party 
at  Queretaro.     At  Santa  Catarina  when  Republicans 
and  Conservatives  were  contending  for  the  town,  and 
on  the  battlefield  of  Jalapa,  where  Cobos  was  defeated, 
he   distinguished  himself  as   a   subordinate.     "  The 
torrent    of    reform,"    says    the    future    President's 
biographer,  Senor  Escudero,  in  his  "  Historic  Notes, 
"  was  advancing  in  waves  of  blood  to  overwhelm  the    * 
past."     The  Republicans  gained  ground,  and,  after  '  ] 
Jalapa,    Porfirio    Diaz    was    named    Governor    and 
Military  Commandant  of  the  district  of  Tehuantepec.     | 

The  isthmus  of  Tehuantepec  lies  at  the  south-east 
end  of  Mexico,  where  it  meets  dense  tropical  forests, 
and  the  Central  American  republic  Guatemala.  The 
town  and  administrative  district  of  the  name  lie  on 
the  south  side  of  the  isthmus.  Geographically  they 
occupy  a  section  of  the  great  Mother  Range  (the  Sierra 
Madre),  which  stretches  along  the  Pacific  shore.  The 
administrative  district  is  of  considerable  size  (500 
square  leagues),  but  they  are  square  leagues  of  rugged 
hill  and  tropical  forest,  inhabited  at  that  time  by 
60,000  Indians  and  half-breeds.  When  the  inhabi- 
tants were  not  torpid  and  utterly  indifferent  they  were 
much  under  Clerical  influence.  Juarez,  who  was 
making  head  with  difficulty  against  Miramon,  could 

^  This  road  was  an  American  venture  and  was  a  forerunner  of  the  Panama 
Canal.     The  scheme  was  quashed  by  the  Senate. 


/ 


46  DIAZ 

spare  Diaz  but  few  men  and  no  money.  On  the 
contrary,  the  new  Governor  was  expected  to  raise 
revenue  and  help  the  general  cause  by  receiving  and 
forwarding  arms  to  be  imported  from  the  United 
States.  The  whole  force  given  him  for  the  perform- 
ance of  these  duties  was  150  men. 

The  enterprise  was,  however,  not  quite  so  hopeless 
as  it  looks  on  the  bare  statement  of  these  facts.  Most 
of  the  inhabitants  of  his  government  did  not  care  for 
either  party,  and  if  they  would  do  nothing  to  help  him 
they  would  do  nothing  to  hinder.  The  Conservatives 
had  their  hands  full  elsewhere,  and  could  send  no 
force  against  him  ;  and  there  was  a  third  condition — a 
universal  one  in  Mexico — which  was  much  in  his 
favour.  However  stagnant  life  might  be  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Sierra  Madre,  the  scattered  towns  and  villages 
had  vivacity  enough  to  keep  alive  local  rivalries. 
The  county  town,  as  we  may  call  it,  Tehuantepec,  was 
in  a  chronic  state  of  dissension  with  the  town  of 
Juchitan.  The  first  was  Clerical  and  was  in  the  hands 
of  a  party  calling  itself  the  Patricios,  the  Patriots,  or 
Patricians,  for  the  word  can  be  used  in  both  senses. 
Probably  for  no  other  reason  than  because  Tehuan- 
tepec was  Clerical,  the  town  of  Juchitan  took  the  other 
side.  Diaz  chose  the  latter  as  his  headquarters,  as 
was  to  be  expected.  The  place  was  for  other  reasons 
convenient  to  him.  It  is  near  the  sea-shore,  and  there- 
fore well  placed  to  receive  stores  from  the  United 
States,  whereas  its  rival  lies  inland. 

Diaz  held  his  government  for  two  years,  1857  to 
1859,  gathering  in  what  money  was  to  be  obtained  and 
dashing  out  in  swift  raids  as  occasion  served.  He 
swooped  down  on  the  Patriots  or  Patricians  of 
Tehuantepec,  who  were  clumsily  preparing  to  fall  on 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        47 

him,  and  sent  them  flying.  For  this  service  he  was 
promoted  to  a  majority.  The  promulgation  of  a  new 
law  which  abolished  the  old  military  commandant- 
ships  in  March,  1858,  and  replaced  them  by  "  political 
districts  "  made  an  alteration  in  the  name,  but  not  in 
the  character  of  his  functions.  Another  success 
against  the  local  Clericals  at  La  Mantequilla  earned 
him  a  lieutenant-colonelship.  And  then  he  did  his 
party  a  material  service. 

A  considerable  convoy  of  arms  imported  from  the 
United  States  had  been  collected  at  Juchitan.  It 
was  to  be  sent  on  to  the  Republicans.  But  Juarez 
could  send  no  troops  to  protect  it,  and  Cobos,  who 
still  held  Oaxaca,  got  wind  of  so  useful  a  prize.  He 
prepared  to  make  a  raid  into  Tehuantepec  and  lay 
hands  on  the  weapons.  They  would  have  been 
valuable  to  the  Conservatives,  who,  owing  to  the 
hostility  of  the  United  States  and  the  occupation  of 
Veracruz  by  Juarez,  were  cut  off  from  supplies  and 
were  much  distressed.  The  Government  at  Veracruz 
learnt  or  suspected  the  intention  of  the  Conservative 
leader,  and  orders  were  sent  to  Diaz  to  destroy 
the  arms  rather  than  allow  them  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  enemy.  But  Diaz  would  not  submit  to  that 
necessity  without  an  effort,  and  he  contrived  to  pass 
the  arms  across  the  hills  with  the  help  of  his  friends  at 
Juchitan.  While  the  convoy  was  making  its  way  to 
the  persons  for  whom  it  was  intended,  he  at  the  head 
of  his  little  force  beat  up  the  quarters  of  the  intruders 
from  Oaxaca  and  delayed  them  effectually.  By  the 
end  of  1859  he  had  made  himself  master  of  the  town  of 
Tehuantepec  and  had  earned  his  colonelcy.  He  was 
now  able  to  come  to  the  help  of  his  friends  elsewhere. 
The  political  district  of  Tehuantepec  was  to  Diaz 


48  DIAZ 

what  the  Eastern  Counties  Association  was  to  Crom- 
well. 

The  Republican  forces  in  Oaxaca  were  under  the 
command  of  General  Ordaz,  who  was  struggling  with 
Cobos   for   the   possession  of   the  city.     Diaz  having 
now  beaten  down  the  Patricios,  raised  500  Indians 
by  the  usual  process  of  the  press  and  marched  to  join 
the  Republican  general.     The  venture  was  not  at  first 
a    successful    one.     When    Diaz    moved    out    from 
Tehuantepec,  his  old  Juchitan  friends,  who  formed  a 
large  part  of  his  force,  proved  recalcitrant.     They  were 
ready  to  serve  in  their  own  country,  but  were  not 
prepared  to  go  out  of  it  on  an  expedition  which  might 
keep  them  from  home  for  an  indefinite  period.     Diaz 
had  to  quiet  a  mutinous  outbreak  on  January  10, 
i860.     The  danger  was,  however,  averted  only  for  a 
few  days.     Cobos,  who  appears  to  have  known  his 
business,  was  not  the  man  to  allow  the  two  Republican 
officers  to  unite  their  forces  at  their  leisure.     He  took 
the  sound  course  and  marched  rapidly  to  fall  upon 
them    while    still    separated.     On    January    21    he 
attacked  Diaz  at   Mitla.     When  the   Conservatives 
were  seen  coming  on,  the  sulky  Juchitans  ran  away  in 
a  body,  and  Diaz  suffered  a  smart  defeat.     Fortu- 
nately for  him  the  approach  of  Ordaz  drew  Cobos  off. 
He  turned  to  deal  with  the  new  enemy,  and  was  in  his 
turn   beaten.     This   timely   intervention   gave   Diaz 
space  in  which  to  rally  his  following  or  such  part  of  it 
as  had  not  gone  back  to  Juchitan.     He  joined  his 
fellow-Republicans,  who  were  now  under  the  command 
of  Salinas,  for  Ordaz  had  been  killed  in  the  encounter 
with  Cobos. 

The  death  of  Ordaz  was    a   bad  mishap  for  the 
Republicans.     His  successor  proved,  if  not  disloyal,  at 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        49 

least  captious  and  dilatory.  Cobos  was  allowed  to 
pick  himself  up.  All  armies  of  the  guerrillero  kind 
reunite  almost  as  readily  as  they  scatter,  and  the 
Conservative  leader  could  rally  on  the  city  of  Oaxaca. 
While  he  was  restoring  order  in  his  following  the 
Republicans  were  wrangling.  The  civil  representa- 
tive of  the  Government,  Diaz's  old  friend  Marcos 
Perez,  endeavoured  in  vain  to  stimulate  Salinas  to 
activity.  They  quarrelled,  and  Diaz  strove  to  pacify 
the  dispute.  He  refused  to  put  his  superior  officer 
under  arrest  at  the  request  of  Don  Marcos.  Then 
Juarez  sent  a  new  general,  Rosas  Landa,  to  take  the 
command.  But  his  choice  was  singularly  iU-judged, 
for  when  Cobos  took  the  offensive  again  Rosas  Landa 
fairly  ran  away,  and  the  Republicans  were  beaten 
out  of  the  field.  Diaz  and  Salinas,  who  held  together, 
took  refuge  in  the  mountains  of  Ixtlan. 

After  such  a  disaster  the  Republican  forces  would 
appear  to  have  been  decisively  disposed  of  in  the 
State  of  Oaxaca.  And  yet  in  August  of  this  very  year 
Diaz  and  Salinas  were  in  possession  of  Oaxaca  city, 
and  Cobos  it  was  who  was  hiding  in  the  hills.  The 
victories  of  loose  guerrillero  armies  are  indeed  com- 
monly barren,  since  they  are  not  gained  in  the  execu- 
tion of  a  comprehensive,  well-thought-out  plan.  More- 
over, it  not  uncommonly  happens  that  the  desire  to 
put  booty  in  a  safe  place,  or  to  obtain  some  private 
fruit  of  victory,  or  even  only  to  enjoy  a  little  rest, 
disorganises  the  victorious  side  as  fully  as  if  it  had 
been  beaten.  Cobos  was  unable  to  follow  up  his 
successes,  and  was  forced  out  of  Oaxaca  because  his 
party  was  losing  ground  everywhere,  his  funds  were 
running  dry,  and  his  men  were  deserting  him. 

The  victory  of  his  cause  in < his? native  State  com- 


50  DIAZ 

pleted  the  first  period  in  the  public  life  of  Porfirio  Diaz. 
The  beginning  of  another  was  marked  in  a  significant 
manner.  In  i860  he  received  his  commission  as 
colonel  in  the  regular  army,  which  had  now  been 
reorganised  by  Juarez.  The  new  model  no  longer 
enjoyed  the  invidious  privilege  of  the  Fuero  Militar, 
but  it  was  none  the  less  the  greatest  force  in  Mexican 
politics.  When  Diaz  passed  from  the  National  Guard, 
to  which  he  had  hitherto  belonged,  and  became  an 
officer  of  the  standing  army,  he,  as  it  were  openly  and 
officially,  took  his  place  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presi- 
dency. Not,  of  course,  at  once,  but  when  the  oppor- 
tunity should  come.  It  was  natural,  and  we  may 
even  say  inevitable,  that  when  he  became  colonel  he 
also  became  deputy  in  the  Congress  summoned  by 
Juarez.  We  must  not  say  he  was  elected,  because  no 
such  thing  as  a  free  election  has  ever  been  known  in 
any  of  the  republics  formed  out  of  the  fragments  of 
the  Spanish  colonial  empire — nor  yet  in  Portuguese 
Brazil.  If  Diaz  came  to  Mexico  city  in  i860  as  deputy 
for  the  district  of  Ocotlan  and  also  as  colonel  in  the 
Oaxaca  brigade  of  the  national  army  the  reason  was 
that  the  Ocotlans  received  a  conge  (Telire  permitting 
them  to  choose  him. 

During  the  last  stage  of  the  war  he  took  an  active 
share  as  a  subordinate  under  Ortega  in  the  field.  He 
was  present  at  the  battle  of  Calpulalpam,  where  the 
organised  forces  of  the  Conservatives  were  finally 
broken.  But  an  overthrow  of  this  kind  did  not  by  any 
means  entail  the  total  defeat  of  the  party.  The  Church 
was  fighting  for  everything  which  could  stimulate  it 
to  struggle.  The  Ley  Juarez  had  deprived  it  of  its 
"fuero,"  which  it  was  bound  by  all  its  principles  to 
consider    a    gross    outrage.     When    Juarez    became 


THE   BEGINNING  OF  A  CAREER        51 

President  of  the  Republic  his  Minister  of  Grace  and 
Justice  framed  the  Ley  Lerdo  de  Tejada — that  was 
his  name — by  which  all  the  property  of  the  Church  was 
confiscated.  This  measure  was  one  of  immense 
importance  for  Mexico.  Its  effects  are  felt  to  this  day, 
and  we  shall  have  to  come  back  to  it.  For  the  moment 
it  is  enough  to  point  out  that  the  Ley  Lerdo  de 
Tejada  not  only  secularised  the  lands  of  the  Church, 
but  that  it  took  all  land  in  Mexico  out  of  mortmain. 
The  spoliation,  as  the  Conservatives  were  bound  to 
call  this  measure,  affected  not  the  Church  alone,  but 
the  Indian  towns,  which  found  themselves  deprived 
of  the  common  lands  which  had  been  secured  to  them 
by  the  old  Spanish  Laws  of  the  Indies.  If,  therefore, 
the  Indians  rallied  to  the  cause  of  the  Church  with  the 
cry  of  ''  Religion  y  Fueros,"  they  were  not  acting 
from  mere  bigotry,  nor  were  they  fighting  only  for  the 
abusive  privilege  of  the  clergy.  Their  own  interests 
were  threatened.  The  priest  and  the  Indian  had  a 
common  cause. 

They  found  a  leader  in  Marquez,  a  pure-blooded 
Indian  of  the  Sierra  de  Queretaro.  The  man  was  a 
savage  who  killed  with  joy.  He  fairly  earned  his  title 
of  "  Tiger  of  Tacubaya."  But  he  was  a  vigorous 
guerriUero  leader.  The  French  officers  who  saw  him 
later  on  judged  that  he  had  even  the  qualities  of  a 
general.  And  he  had  the  further  considerable  advan- 
tage that  he  was  an  Indian^ chief  who  could  rely  on 
the  loyalty  of  his  tribesmen.  Though  Juarez  was  in 
possession  of  the  capital  and  had  summoned  a  Con- 
gress, a  great  part  of  the  country  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  Conservatives.  In  June,  1861,  Marquez  made  a 
dash  at  the  capital.  Diaz  was  compelled  to  leave 
his  place  in  Congress  and  join  Ortega  in  the  field. 

E  2 


52  DIAZ 

Marquez  was  driven  back.  His  loose  bands  of  guer- 
rilleros  were  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  open.  He  was 
beaten  at  Jalatlaco  and  then  again  at  Mineral  del 
Monte.  On  the  first  occasion  Diaz  attacked  without 
orders  and  won  a  distinct  success.  The  Conserva- 
tives were  described  as  defeated  and  their  army  as 
scattered.  But  the  reader  will  understand  that,  as 
usual,  being  defeated  and  scattered  by  no  means 
entailed  being  brought  to  submission.  Marquez's 
guerrilleros  did  not  make  a  point  of  honour  of  holding 
a  position.  They  relied  on  wearing  their  enemy  down, 
and  they  knew  very  well  that  the  few  thousand  more 
or  less  disciplined  troops  at  the  disposal  of  Juarez  were 
utterly  unequal  to  the  task  of  occupying  their  hills. 
They  divided  when  hard  pressed,  only  to  meet  again 
miles  off.  The  Conservatives  were  masters  of  much 
of  the  country,  and  Marquez  was  in  arms  when  a  new 
and  a  strange  chapter  opened  in  the  history  of  Mexico. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    FRENCH    INTERVENTION 

Where  the  carcass  is  there  will  the  eagles  be 
gathered  together — and  the  vultures.  The  weakness 
and  anarchy  of  the  late  Spanish  colonies  marked  them 
out  as  a  tempting  prey  for  armed  adventurers. 
Squatters  came  to  the  territory  north  of  the  Rio 
Grande,  Texas,  and  then,  not  without  reasonable 
grounds  of  provocation  on  the  part  of  corrupt  and 
brutal  Mexican  officials,  tore  it  away.  The  slave 
power  in  the  United  States  saw  an  opening  for  the 
extension  of  slavery  in  Northern  Mexico.  By  the  end 
of  1849  the  Republic  had  been  deprived  by  force  of,  or 
had  sold,  all  its  belongings  beyond  its  present  northern 
frontier.  Small  adventurers  nibbled,  or  tried  to 
nibble,  bits  of  Central  American  or  Mexican  land. 
The  Englishman  who  knows  of  the  Cacique  of  Poyais 
only  from  Thackeray  may  be  excused  for  believing 
that  he  was  an  invention  of  the  novelist.  But  Gregor 
Macgregor  was  a  flesh  and  blood  reality  who  has  his 
column  in  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography." 
He  tried  to  conquer  and  to  found  a  State.  The 
mining  camps  of  California  bred  imitators  of  the 
Cacique  in  some  numbers.  There  was  Walker,  known 
in  rhetorical  phrase  as  the  Grey-Eyed  Man  of  Destiny. 
Quite  a  small  world  of  filibusters  made  inroads, 
launched  companies,  and  commonly  ended  before  a 
firing  party.  Their  doings  are  recorded  in  Mr.  H.  H. 
Bancroft's  "  History  of  the  Northern  Mexican  States," 


54  DIAZ 

Vol.  II..  with  copious  references  to  authorities.  It  is  a 
point  not  to  be  overlooked  that  the  French  among  the 
miscellaneous  swarms  of  fortune  hunters  in  California 
cast  their  eyes  on  the  province  of  Sonora,  at  the  north- 
western end  of  the  Mexican  frontier.  Schemes  for 
founding  a  French  colony  in  Sonora  were  evolved  and 
advertised.  Napoleon  III.  himself  did  more  than 
play  with  them.  The  object  was  to  work  the  mines, 
which  had  been  profitable  under  Spanish  rule,  but 
had  been  neglected  since  its  fall.  Two  attempts  to 
seize  on  the  much-exaggerated  wealth  of  the  province 
were  made  by  French  adventurers  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  Comte  de  Pindray  and  the  gentleman  of 
Provence  who  bore  the  imposing  name  Gaston  Raoulx, 
Comte  de  Raousset  Boulbon.  The  first  died  in 
mysterious  circumstances — by  his  own  hand  or  by 
murder  at  the  hands  of  his  mates.  The  second,  a 
young  decave  who  had  run  through  a  fair  patrimony 
in  a  few  months,  had  written  a  novel,  said  to  be 
very  bad,  and  a  good  deal  of  such  verse  as  poetasters 
wrote  with  Lamartine  and  Alfred  de  Musset  before 
them  as  models,  was  intent  on  making  a  great  deal 
of  money  by  a  gambler's  throw.  He  was  shot  by 
the  Mexicans  in  1854.  They  may  stand  for  the 
eagles.^ 

The  vultures  cannot  be  better  represented  than  by 
Jecker  of  the  notorious  bonds.  It  is  to  be  observed 
that  this  financial  adventurer,  who  was  at  last 
murdered  by  the  communards,  was  in  partnership  or 
league  with  Raousset  Boulbon.     European  capitalists 

^  The  reader  who  may  care  to  investigate  this  odd  backwater  of  American 
history  will  find  quite  interesting  matter  in  the  story  of  his  captivity,  told 
by  M.  Vigneaux,  one  of  the  companions  of  Pindray  and  Raousset  Boulbon, 
and  in  the  rather  frothy  but  amusing  life  of  that  person  by  the  Marquis  de 
la  Madeline.     There  is  another  by  a  M.  de  Lachapelle,  which  I  have  not  seen. 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  55 

had  been  very  imprudently  ready  to  lend  money  to 
the  Spanish-American  States.  The  facility  with 
which  the  transient  chiefs  of  these  communities  were 
for  a  time  able  to  raise  loans  had  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  promoting  their  spendthrift  wars.  The  money 
was  of  course  scandalously  wasted,  and  much  of  it 
was  stolen  by  the  predominant  generals  of  the  day. 
A  large  part  of  the  diplomatic  correspondence  of  other 
nations  with  Mexico  was  concerned  with  the  reclama- 
tions of  defrauded  and  disappointed  creditors.  To 
them  were  to  be  added  the  incessant  complaints  of 
foreign  merchants,  who  suffered  from  robbery  dis- 
guised as  forced  loans,  or  robbery  naked  and  un- 
ashamed. In  reality  these  victims  suffered  a  good 
deal  less  than  native  Mexicans.  After  all,  they  had 
their  Consuls  and  Ministers  to  speak  for  them,  while 
the  dictator  of  the  day  had  his  reasons  for  not  going 
too  far  against  the  possible  dispensers  of  loans,  or  the 
Governments  from  which  he  might  have  to  ask  a  safe 
refuge.  After  a  time  honourable  financial  houses 
declined  to  have  anything  to  do  with  such  creditors. 
Then  the  rulers  who  came  and  went  were  driven  to 
make  bargains  with  mere  money-lenders  of  the  Jecker 
stamp.  Miramon,  the  Conservative  President  ex- 
pelled by  Juarez  for  one,  made  a  bargain  with  Jecker. 
In  return  for  a  little  money  down  he  acknowledged  a 
huge  sum  of  debt. 

I  do  not  propose  to  swell  these  pages  by  even  the 
briefest  summary  of  the  diplomatic  history  of  the 
French  intervention  in  Mexico.  It  has  been  often  told 
and  can  be  conveniently  read  in  the  "  Expedition  du 
Mexique  "  of  Captain  Niox,  or,  better  still,  in  the 
"  History  of  the  Second  Empire,"  by  M.  Pierre  de  la 
Gorce.     But  it  is  not  an  irrelevancy  in  a  life  of  the  man 


56  DIAZ 

who  was  to  put  Mexico  in  an  honourable  position, 
at  least  for  a  time,  to  give  some  account  of  the 
"  bochorno,"  the  sweltering  puddle  of  hot  mud,  from 
which  he  pulled  his  country.  We  will  leave  aside  the 
dreams  of  Napoleon  III.,  the  fantastic  delusions  of  the 
Spanish  Court,  the  queer  mixture  of  Quixotic  vapours 
and  Sancho  Panza-like  gross  common  sense  of  Prim, 
the  wrongs  of  the  British  Embassy  as  told  by  the 
Minister  (Sir  Charles  Wyke),  the  fictions  of  the  French 
Minister  (M.  de  Saligny),  the  produce  of  a  disorderly 
imagination  coloured  by  financial  speculations,  and 
the  tripotages  of  the  Due  de  Morny.  In  1861  the  War 
of  Secession  was  coming  on  in  the  United  States,  and 
they  for  a  time  were  neutralised.  Then  all  the  vague 
ambitions,  the  self-deluding  and  deluded  greeds  of 
the  Raousset  Boulbons  and  Jeckers,  ran  into  the  river 
of  dreams  of  "  regeneration  of  the  Latin  race  " 
and  creation  of  a  barrier  against  the  ambitions  of  the 
United  States  (very  rashly  avowed)  which  flowed 
through  the  loose  imaginings  in  the  head  of 
Napoleon  III.  The  practical  result  was  the  French 
intervention  in  Mexico  and  the  ghastly  story  of  the 
Empire  of  Maximilian. 

Yet  it  was  not  all  the  folly  of  a  songe  creux.  There 
was  just  enough  reality  in  it  to  provide  a  solid  basis 
for  the  vapours  to  settle  on.  We  shall  have  evidence 
from  the  campaigns  of  Porfirio  Diaz  himself  that 
multitudes  of  Mexicans  would  gladly  have  reconciled 
themselves  to  obey  a  strong,  intelligent  foreign 
Government,  which  would  keep  order  and  administer 
with  an  eye  to  the  good  of  the  country.  There  was, 
too,  the  Church,  maddened  by  spoliation.  There 
were  the  Indians,  aggrieved  by  the  confiscation  of  the 
communal  lands.     If  the  work  had  been  done  honestly, 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  57 

if  the  Church  had  been  fairly  treated  as  far  as  fair  j 
treatment  was  possible  in  such  a  case,  and  the  Indian 
commoners  justly  compensated,  the  throwing  of  the 
lands  held  in  mortmain  into  "  general  circulation  " 
might  have  been  a  gain  for  Mexico.     But  it  was  not/ 
honestly  done.     We  need  not  take  too  high  a  tone! 
to    the    Mexicans.     Considering    how    Henry    VIIL' 
spoiled   the    English   monasteries,   how   barons   and 
lairds  ravened  the  Church  lands  in  Scotland,  what  was    / 
done  in  France  during  the  Revolution,  and  in  Spain 
after  1833,  we  ^^^  leave  the  Mexicans  to  do  the  preach- 
ing for  themselves.     The  fact  must  none  the  less  be    \ 
recorded  that  a  swarm  of  pillagers,  fraudulent  pur-    / 
chasers,  politicians,  and  generals  in  search  of  booty 
settled  on  the  confiscated  lands.     No   part   of   the    . 
produce  was  devoted  to  the  public  good.     The  victims    \ 
were  sore  and  angry.     The  victimisers  were  thieving, 
scuffling,  intriguing,  and  lying. 

The  mass  of  quiet  townsmen  and  the  peasants  of 
Indian  blood  who  had  some  property  bowed,  not 
unwillingly,  to  the  foreign  rule  as  they  did  to  the 
unending  patriots,  all  more  or  less  sanguinary,  who 
proclaimed  this  or  that,   and  raised  the  banner  of     f 
revolt.     If  there  had  been  no  United  States,  or  if  the      ' 
Secession  had  succeeded  ;  if  Maximilian  had  not  been      1 
a  weak-willed  and  vaguely  romantic  person  who  lived      ) 
in  a  perpetual  performance  of  private  theatricals  ;   if 
the  Clerical  party  had  had  sense  and  statesmanship  ;    / 
if  the  mass  of  Mexicans  who  longed  for  peace  and 
security  would  have  acted  instead  of  waiting  to  be    . 
saved    by   some   Heaven-sent  good  government,  the 
empire  might  have  been  established  and  the  Archduke 
might  have  died  at  a  great  age  on  what  was  absurdly 
enough  called  the  throne  of  Montezuma.     As  every     | 


58  DIAZ 

one  of  these  conditions  was  lacking,  it  was  just  a 
frantic  adventure. 

In  the  spring  of  1862  England  and  Spain  had  with- 
drawn from  what  they  had  meant  should  be  an  attempt 
to  recover  debts,  and  France  had  been  launched  on 
what  was  in  plain  English  a  scheme  to  conquer 
Mexico  thinly  veiled  by  professions  of  a  wish  to  enable 
its  people  to  decide  their  own  destinies  undeterred  by 
the  "  menaces  of  demagogues."  General  de  Lorencez 
was  at  Orizaba  with  some  6,000  French  troops.  He 
had  been  joined  by  a  few  hundred  Conservative 
guerrilleros — lean  and  sun-dried  scarecrows,  half 
naked,  armed  with  lances  and  mounted  on  their  wiry 
nags.  They  and  their  usual  tail  of  women  and 
children  gave  the  French  no  very  high  opinion  of  the 
military  quality  of  the  allies  they  were  to  find  m 
Mexico,  according  to  the  highly-coloured  promises  of 
M.  de  Saligny.  The  Zouaves  and  Chasseurs  ei'Afrique 
in  Lorencez's  little  army  had  seen  just  such  a  "  smala  " 
before.  The  Mexican  forces  sent  by  Juarez  to  watch 
and  oppose  the  French  were  commanded  by  General 
Zaragoza,  with  whom  Diaz  was  now  serving  as 
brigadier  in  the  Oaxaca  contingent. 

The  French  basis  of  supply  was  at  Veracruz. .  This, 
the  principal  port  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  lies  on  the  sea 
front  of  the  Hot  Land  (the  Tierra  Caliente),  which  is  a 
strip  of  marsh  some  sixty  miles  wide,  swarming  with 
yellow-bellied  mosquitoes  and  reeking  with  fever. 
The  inner  border  of  the  Tierra  Caliente  is  formed  by 
the  river  Chiquihuite.  Beyond  the  river  begin  the 
slopes  of  the  great  snow-capped  mountain  Orizaba. 
Here  is  the  starting-point  of  the  Tierras  Templadas 
(the  Temperate  Zone),  well  cultivated  and  containing 
well-built  towns — Cordoba,  Orizaba,  and  others.     The 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  59 

Tierras  Templadas  rise  by  a  gentle  slope  till  they  are 
cut  by  a  barrier  of  high  and  precipitous  hills  running 
from  north  to  south — the  Cumbres,  or  Heights. 
The  Cumbres  can  be  turned,  but  the  country  was 
roadless  and  little  known  to  the  French.  The  yellow 
fever  of  the  Tierra  Caliente  had  been  so  fatal  to  them 
that  they  had  drawn  every  man  they  could  to  the 
front.  Guerrilleros  were  pestering  their  communica- 
tions, which  were  but  ill  guarded.  If  Lorencez  had 
endeavoured  to  turn  the  Cumbres  he  would  have 
marched  into  the  air. 

In  the  circumstances  the  French  general  would  have 
done  better  to  remain  at  Orizaba  till  the  means  for  a 
further   advance   were   provided.     But   he   had   the 
natural  desire  of  a  soldier  to  distinguish  himself.     And 
then  he  had  been  assured  by  M.  de  Saligny,  whose 
advice  he  was  told  to  take,  that  he  had  only  to  show 
himself  in  the  interior  in  order  to  be  greeted  with 
effusion  by  the  mass  of  the  Mexicans.     He  knew,  too,    . 
that  there  were  Conservative  bands  in  the  field  and  / 
that  they  were  threatening  General  Zaragoza.     So  he  ■ 
decided   to   advance,   relying   on   the   vast   military 
superiority  of  his  soldiers  and  the  promises  of  M.  de 
Saligny. 

Behind  the  Cumbres  lies  the  lofty  tableland  of 
Anahuac,  the  Cold  Lands  (Tierras  Frias)  of  Mexico. 
Two  passes  lead  from  the  town  of  Orizaba  to  the  plain 
of  Anahuac — one  by  the  Cumbres  de  Maltrata  is  only 
just  practicable  by  wheeled  carriages,  and  very  diffi- 
cult. It  leads  to  the  town  of  San  Andres  Chalchico- 
mula.  The  second  goes  by  the  defile  of  Acultzingo, 
from  whence  the  road  is  open  and  easy  to  the  very 
Clerical  town  of  Puebla  de  los  Angeles,  which  was  the 
prize  he  aimed  at.     The  pass  is  a  staircase  flanked  by 


6o  DIAZ 

precipices,  almost  impossible  to  turn,  and  providing 
two  most  defensible  positions  at  the  Great  and  Little 
Cumbres,  the  two  parallel  chains  forming  the  range. 
It  may  be  confidently  asserted  that  if  such  a  position 
had  been  held  by  Prim  with  half  the  Spanish  soldiers 
who  had  just  gone  back  to  Cuba,  or  by  2,000  Boer 
marksmen,  Lorencez  would  not  have  forced  the  pass  j 
by  a  front  attack,  not  even  if  he  had  been  prepared  ' 
"  to  cloy  the  jaws  of  death."     But  he  was  opposed  by   , 
pressed  Indians  who  had  received  a  mere  veneer  of  ''^ 
drill,  who  had  never  been  ta^ught  to  hold  a  position  ^ 
solidly,  and  who  were  commanded  by  men  who  were 
officers  only  because  they  had  received  commissions.  | 
The  patriot  troops  had  just  given  a  proof  of  their  , 
quality.     The  first  brigade  of  the  Oaxaca  contingent  / 
had  been  sent  to  take  quarters  in  the  tithe  barn  of 
Chalchicomula.     They  shambled  into  the  yard,  men, 
women,  and  children,  bringing  with  them  a  convoy  of 
gunpowder.     The  explosive  was  thrown  down  at  the 
"  grace  of  God,"  and  the  women  set  about  cooking 
their  husbands'   dinners.     The  natural  consequence 
followed.     The  gunpowder  caught  fire  and  blew  up. 
The  brigade,  the  women,  children,  horses,  pack  mules, 
and  the  tithe  barn  were  dashed  to  pieces.     Yet  that 
brigade  passed  for  one  of  the  best  in  the  Mexican 
army.     It  had  served  under  Diaz  and  was  partly 
raised  by  him.     It  would  be  pure  waste  to  spend 
words  over  the  action  of  April  28  when  Lorencez  forced 
the  pass.     Enough  that  eight  companies  of  the  2nd 
Zouaves  and  six  companies  of  the  1st  Battalion  of  the 
Chasseurs  h.  pied  rushed  a  position  600  metres  high 
defended  by  some  4,000  men  and  18  guns,  with  a  loss 
of  two  killed  and  32  wounded. 

Lorencez  may  be  excused  for  thinking  after  such  an 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  6i 

experience  as  this  that  he  could  safely  rush  at  any- 
thing held  by  Mexican  troops.  When  Zaragoza  fell 
back  on  the  town  of  Puebla  the  French  general 
followed  him  nothing  doubting.  But  he  was  mis- 
taken. The  Mexicans,  Indians,  and  mestizos  were 
not  cowards.  When  they  were  stationed  in  solid  | 
stone  buildings,  loopholed,  they  could  stand  well. 
Puebla  is  a  typical  Spanish-Indian  town,  full  of  solid 
houses  and  massive  convents,  and  defended  on  the 
east  by  outlying  forts.  The  proper  approach  is  on 
the  western  side,  and  so  Lorencez  had  been  told  by  a 
Mexican  officer  who  joined  him.  In  his  contempt  for 
such  soldiers,  and  his  overweening  confidence  in  his 
own  men,  he  simply  marched  along  the  Orizaba  road 
from  the  east,  and  rushed  at  the  forts  on  May  5. 
He  had  no  battering  train,  and  what  guns  he  had — 
light  field-pieces — ^were  fired  at  too  great  a  distance 
to  produce  any  effect.  Of  course  no  impression  was 
made  on  the  forts.  The  French,  marching  up  to 
unbreached  walls,  lost  heavily,  and  were  brought  to  a 
standstill.  Diaz  contributed  materially  to  their  final 
repulse  by  a  well-timed  and  well-directed  sortie 
against  the  flank  of  their  line.  A  violent  storm  of 
rain  came  down.  Lorencez  fell  back  with  a  loss  of 
16  officers  and  156  men  killed,  19  officers  and  285  men 
wounded.  Zaragoza  hardly  went  too  far  when  he  said 
that  the  French  general  made  his  attack  con  torpeza^ 
that  is  to  say,  in  a  very  clumsy  manner.  But  the 
victorious  Mexican's  report  grows  almost  lyrical  over 
the  valour  of  the  French  soldiers,  and  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  the  general  was  much  and  agreeably  surprised 
by  his  victory  over  "  the  first  soldiers  in  the  world." 

Diaz   himself   was   honourably   candid    as   to   his 
own  feelings.     When  in  later^years  he  dictated  his 


62  DIAZ 

reminiscences  he  frankly  said  :  "  The  victory  was  so 
unexpected  that  we  were  surprised  indeed  by  it,  and 
as  it  appeared  to  me  to  be  a  dream  I  bivouacked  that 
night  on  the  field  in  order  to  confirm  the  reality  of  the 
event  by  the  dumb  testimony  of  our  enemy's  dead 
and  those  of  our  own  forces  ;  by  the  talk  of  the  soldiers 
round  the  fires,  and  the  distant  glow  of  the  enemy's 
camp." 

The  French  did  indeed  inspire  such  a  profound 
respect  for  their  fighting  capacity  in  the  open  that  no 
serious  attempt  was  made  to  harass  them  during  their 
retreat  to  Orizaba.  General  Zaragoza  did,  it  is  true, 
follow  them  in  time  and  at  a  safe  distance,  but  he 
made  no  attempt  to  force  on  an  action.  The  siege 
of  Orizaba  which  he  proceeded  to  form  when  he  had 
been  reinforced  amounted  to  very  little  more  than  a 
passive  watching  of  Lorencez's  little  army  from  a  long 
way  off.  General  Zaragoza  showed  a  well-grounded 
prudence  in  abstaining  from  more  active  measures. 
The  result  of  the  one  offensive  movement  of  the 
Mexicans  only  proved  their  utter  unfitness  to  meet 
the  French  at  close  quarters.  Orizaba  is  dominated 
by  a  hill,  the  Cerro  Borrego.  When  an  attempt  was 
made  to  seize  this  position  on  June  14,  and  by  a  large 
Mexican  force,  it  was  shattered  by  140  soldiers  of  the 
99th  of  the  line  commanded  by  Captain  Detrie.  The 
Mexican  force  was  composed  of  2,000  men  of  the 
division  of  Zecatecas,  who  were  counted  as  the  best 
drilled  in  the  Mexican  army. 

From  early  in  May,  1862,  till  the  beginning  of 
March,  1863,  the  war  was  at  a  standstill.  The  French 
were  receiving  reinforcements  and  were  preparing  to 
advance.  Juarez  was  doing  all  that  was  in  his  power 
to  organise  a  national  resistance.     General  Lorencez 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  63 

reopened,  and  kept  open,  his  communications  with 
Veracruz  until  he  was  recalled  and  replaced  by- 
General  (afterwards  Marshal)  Forey.  Diaz,  who  had 
been  promoted  to  general  of  brigade  for  his  services 
on  May  5,  was  appointed  MiHtary  Governor  of  the 
Veracruz  district.  There  was,  however,  very  little 
for  him  to  do.  The  only  forces  available  for  opera- 
tions against  the  invaders  were  the  guerrillero  bands 
formed  of  men  who  had  lived  by  civil  strife.  They 
were  mere  brigands,  whose  highest  achievement  was 
to  butcher  stragglers,  and,  when  the  luck  favoured 
them,  to  cut  off  a  very  small  detachment.  They 
were  perfectly  ferocious,  and  they  excelled  themselves 
in  cruelty  to  those  of  their  countrymen  who  were 
known,  or  were  only  suspected,  to  sympathise  with 
the  French.  Against  them  the  foreign  authorities  1 
organised  the  notorious  contra-guerrillera  led  by  ' 
Colonel  du  Pin.  This  body  was  recruited  mainly 
among  the  broken  men — beachcombers,  deserters 
from  ships,  bullies  and  ruffians  of  all  nationalities,  and 
no  scruple — ^who  have  ever  hung  about  the  Gulf  ports. 
Du  Pin  fought  the  Mexican  guerrilleros  with  their  own 
weapons,  and  proved  to  demonstration  that  European 
vagabonds  led  by  a  French  officer  could  equal  the 
vilest  excesses  of  native  ferocity.  No  good  was  to 
be  done  for  the  one  side  or  the  other  by  such  methods 
as  these.  Diaz  might  well  prefer,  and  did  prefer,  to 
take  his  share  in  a  more  honourable  kind  of  warfare. 
While  the  French  expedition  was  being  raised  to  an 
adequate  strength  by  drafts  from  Europe,  Juarez  was 
preparing  to  defend  his  Government.  The  method  he 
took  was  perhaps  the  only  one  available  in  the  existing 
circumstances.  He  concentrated  the  arms  and  the 
men  he  could  scrape  together  at  Puebla,  and  decided 


64  DIAZ 

to  make  a  stand  at  that  fortress.  A  place  besieged  is 
a  place  taken  unless  it  can  be  relieved  from  the  outside, 
and,  as  the  President's  power  to  collect  another  army- 
capable  of  forcing  the  French  to  raise  the  siege  they 
were  certain  to  undertake  was  nil,  it  follows  that  the 
forces  shut  up  in  Puebla  must  sooner  or  later  be  lost. 
The  case  would  seem  to  have  been  one  for  acting  on 
the  maxim  of  Sir  WiUiam  Wallace — ^who  loved  better 
to  hear  the  lark  sing  than  the  mouse  cheep — for 
refusing  to  shut  men  up  within  walls,  for  relying  on  a 
policy  of  wearing  the  French  down  by  skirmishes  and 
stopping  their  advance  by  threatening  their  com- 
munications. So  undoubtedly  he  ought  to  have 
behaved  if  he  could  have  relied  on  the  support  of  the 
whole  population  of  Mexico.  But  he  could  not. 
The  mass  of  the  people  was  passive,  and  a  good  half 
of  those  who  were  prepared  to  act — that  is,  the 
Clericals — ^were  bitterly  hostile  and  were  co-operating 
with  the  French.  To  hold  Puebla  strongly,  make  a 
long  defence  and  so  gain  time,  was  on  the  whole  the 
best  course  to  follow.  So  some  15,000  men  were 
thrown  into  the  town  and  there  awaited  the  advance 
of  the  French.  The  President's  policy  was  to  some 
extent  justified  by  the  fact  that  not  a  few  of  the  Con- 
servative leaders  rallied  to  him  when  it  became  clear 
that  the  country  was  about  to  be  invaded  by  a  French 
army.  Their  patriotism  was  possibly  stimulated  by  a 
shrewd  suspicion  that  a  Government  supported  by  a 
serious  force  might  be  strong  enough  to  put  a  stop  to 
the  profitable  game  of  pronunciamiento-making.  Yet 
they  must  be  credited  with  having  subordinated  party 
to  country  without  renouncing  their  principles,  for 
no  sooner  had  the  French  army  retired  before  the 
menaces  of  the  United  States  in  1 867  thau  most  of 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  65 

them  who  survived  took  up  arms  at  once  in  the  old 
quarrel.  In  1863  there  was  a  faint  possibility  that 
all  the  Conservatives  would  follow  their  example,  and 
there  was  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  giving  time  to 
time — dar  tiempo  at  tiempo,  as  the  Spanish  maxim 
(much  acted  on)  has  it.  Zaragoza  having  died  in  the 
interval,  General  Ortega  was  appointed  to  conduct 
the  defence. 

The  siege  of  Puebla  was  even  more  creditable  to  the 
Mexicans  than  the  repulse  of  Lorencez's  feeble  attack 
on  May  5.  They  held  out  from  March  16  to  May  17, 
and  then  did  not  surrender  till  their  provisions  were 
exhausted.  We  are  told  in  the  reminiscences  of  Diaz 
that  he  and  several  other  of  the  generals  present  urged 
Ortega  to  take  a  line  which  would  have  been  more 
spirited,  and  if  successful  vastly  more  effective,  than 
a  pure  defence.  He  says  that  when  Forey's  army  of 
26,000  men  was  closing  round  the  town  it  advanced 
in  two  columns,  one  on  one  side  and  the  other  on  the 
other.  Diaz  and  the  generals  who  thought  with  him 
implored  their  chief  to  strike  at  the  head  of  one  of  the 
columns.  It  does  appear  a  tenable  proposition  that  an 
army  of  15,000,  or  according  to  the  French  of  20,000, 
which  possessed  the  advantage  of  acting  on  interior 
lines  and  of  being  covered  behind  by  the  town,  might 
have  spared  men  enough  to  concentrate  a  superior 
force  at  a  point  of  attack  to  deliver  a  shrewd  blow  at 
the  French  while  they  were  coming  into  position. 
Ortega  would  take  no  risks  and  refused.  His  advisers 
retired,  some  of  them  grumbHng  audibly  that  they 
were  condemned  to  be  caught  in  a  trap  and  compelled 
to  surrender  sooner  or  later. 

The  President's  memory  of  that  council  of  war  may 
be  frankly  accepted  as  correct.     Subordinate  officers 


66  DIAZ 

who  cannot  give  the  decision,  and  who  therefore  would 
not  be  held  responsible  if  it  were  taken  and  failed, 
have  always  been  ready  to  urge  the  adoption  of  a  bold 
course  on  wary  commanders-in-chief.  On  the  prin- 
ciples Diaz  was  no  doubt  right,  and  yet  it  may  well  be 
that  Ortega  was  not  wrong.  The  attack  from  the 
centre  to  the  circumference  by  the  lesser  on  the  more 
numerous  army  is  no  doubt  a  brilliant  manoeuvre,  but 
unless  it  is  performed  with  rapidity  and  precision  it 
will  infallibly  be  disastrous.  The  Mexican  army  had 
not  been  trained  to  observe  what  CoUingwood  called 
"  the  nice  concert  of  measures  that  are  necessary  to 
success."  If  Ortega  had  tried  to  play  the  great  game 
of  Rossbach  and  Leuthen  and  Salamanca,  it  is,  con- 
sidering the  quality  of  his  troops,  eminently  probable 
that  he  would  have  been  heavily  beaten,  and  then 
Puebla  would  have  fallen  at  once.  The  cautious  line 
he  took  had  at  least  the  merit  of  making  it  possible  to 
hold  the  French  back  for  two  months  and  so  give  time 
to  time. 

M.  Pierre  de  la  Gorce,  in  his  "  History  of  the  Second 
Empire,"  tells  us  that  when  the  first  reports  of  the 
siege  of  Puebla  began  to  reach  Paris  (by  steamer,  for 
the  Atlantic  cable  was  not  laid  at  that  date)  the  name 
of  Zaragoza — the  Spanish  city,  not  the  Mexican 
general — was  much  in  the  mouths  of  critics  and  also 
of  nervous  friends  of  Napoleon  III.  There  was  just 
enough  similarity  between  the  two  sieges  to  save  the 
comparison  from  being  altogether  one  of  the  Macedon 
and  Monmouth  order.  There  was,  however,  one 
great  difference.  The  capital  of  Aragon  was  defended 
in  1808  by  its  inhabitants  and  the  countrymen  of  the 
neighbourhood,  who  took  refuge  within  its  walls. 
Puebla  was  defended  by  its  numerous  garrison.     The 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTItN  67 

city  was  perhaps  the  most  levitical  in  all  Mexico — the 
very  centre  and  headquarters  of  the  Clerical  party. 
Whatever  sympathies  the  townsmen  had  were  rather 
with  the  enemy  outside  than  with  the  defenders 
within.  But  as  usual  these  sympathies  were  entirely 
passive.     Forey  gained  nothing  positive  by  them. 

The  prominent  part  which  Diaz  took  in  the  two 
months'  resistance  laid  the  foundation  of  his  fame. 
Until  now  he  was  only  one  of  a  large  body  of  political 
and  semi-political  generals  and  colonels,  who  were 
collectively  a  pest.  When  the  siege  ended  he  was  well 
on  his  way  to  become  a  national  hero.  We  must 
therefore  dwell  a  little  on  his  actions  and  look  with 
some  attention  at  the  place  where  they  were  per- 
formed. 

Because  Puebla  "  of  the  Angels  "  was,  and  from  the 
first  had  been,  above  all  a  Clerical  city,  it  abounded  in 
massive  buildings.  Its  sixteen  convents  and  many 
of  the  secular  houses  within  it  had  been  erected  in  the 
most  flourishing  ages  of  Spanish  colonial  history. 
Building  material  was  abundant,  time  was  no  con- 
sideration, slave  and  serf  labour  was  obtainable  in 
unlimited  quantities.  In  these  conditions  the 
Spaniards  constructed  as  if  they  were  building  for 
eternity.  They  brought  with  them  an  excellent 
tradition  of  masonry,  inherited,  not  from  the  so-called 
Arabs,  whose  work  in  that  kind  was  far  from  good, 
but  from  the  "  obras  de  Romanos,"  the  works  of  the 
Romans  at  Merida,  Segovia,  and  Tarragona.  They 
made  admirable  mortar,  and  then  they  held  the  rule 
that  "  Lo  que  quita  el  frio  quita  el  calor  "  ("  What 
keeps  out  the  cold  keeps  out  the  heat  ").  A  thick- 
walled  house  is  warmer  in  winter  and  cooler  in  summer. 
All  this  stonework  would  have  crumbled  into  dust 

r  2 


68  DIAZ 

within  a  few  hours  under  the  fire  of  the  guns  which 
have  thundered  in  the  ears  of  all  the  world  since 
August,  1 91 4.  But  Forey  had  no  such  battering  train. 
The  massive  old  Spanish  walls  were  quite  equal  to  the 
strain  of  resisting  his  field-pieces  and  his  eight  "  canons 
de  12  de  siege,"  with  their  reserve  of  six  of  the  same 
calibre.  Nor  had  Ortega  been  negligent  in  prepara- 
tion. The  forts  on  the  west  and  south  and  the  city 
walls  were  looked  to.  Of  these  no  more  need  be  said. 
Forey  was  warned  by  the  experience  of  Lorencez  and 
made  his  attack  from  the  east,  where  the  city  lies 
most  open.  Ortega  had  foreseen  that  this  would 
probably  be  the  side  to  be  assailed.  He  had  made  a 
fort  of  the  penitentiary  which  stood  outside  the  walls. 
It  was  named  the  San  Javier  (i.e.,  St.  Xavier).  But 
the  real  defences  were  within.  Barricades  had  been 
solidly  constructed,  house  walls  loopholed,  mines  laid. 
He  meant  to  fight  from  barricade  to  barricade,  and  to 
force  the  enemy  to  pay  heavily  for  every  advance.  It 
was  a  reasonable  calculation  that  Forey,  whose  rein- 
forcements must  reach  him  across  the  Atlantic,  could 
not  afford  to  be  "  a  general  at  10,000  men  a  week." 
The  French  officer  would  perhaps  have  done  better  to 
begin  where  he  was  forced  to  end,  that  is  to  say,  invest 
the  town  and  starve  it  out,  standing  ready  to  scatter 
any  forces  which  might  come  to  its  relief.  He  would 
have  got  the  place  quite  as  soon  as  he  did,  and  would 
have  lost  fewer  men — a  consideration  of  some  weight 
for  a  general  who  had  only  26,000  with  whom  to 
dominate  a  country  four  times  the  size  of  France. 
But  this  thrifty  course  would  have  been  painful  to  an 
army  which,  justly  enough  on  the  whole,  had  no  great 
respect  for  the  military  qualities  of  its  opponents. 
So  he  fixed  his  headquarters  at  the  convent  of  San 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  69 

Juan  on  a  low  hill  to  the  east  of  the  town,  and  pre- 
pared to  clear  the  way  by  taking  the  San  Javier  and 
then  effect  a  quick  storm. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  the 
siege,  but  only  to  show  the  theatre  on  which  Diaz  was 
to  win  distinction.  As  regards  the  general  operations, 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  the  besieger's  force  had  no 
difficulty  in  disposing  of  such  relieving  force  as  Juarez 
was  able  to  send  ;  that  the  San  Javier  was  stormed, 
the  city  walls  occupied  ;  and  that  then  the  real 
fighting  began  inside.  This  stage  lasted  till  April  7. 
During  that  period  the  French  had  lost  one  general 
and  seven  officers  killed,  39  officers  wounded,  56 
soldiers  killed,  and  443  wounded.  A  casualty  list  of 
545  in  an  army  of  26,000  may  not  appear  very  serious. 
But  the  progress  made  was  little,  and  the  historian 
of  the  Mexican  expedition.  Captain  Niox,  has  to  con- 
fess that  this  fighting  amid  loopholed  walls,  over  mines, 
and  under  falling  roofs  tried  the  nerve  of  the  soldiers. 
It  made,  he  confesses,  "  une  impression  facheuse  sur 
leur  moral."  Forey  turned  the  siege  into  a  blockade 
and  waited  till  hunger  compelled  the  Mexicans  to 
capitulate. 

Diaz  was  in  the  thick  of  the  fighting  during  the  last 
days  of  March  and  the  first  of  April.  The  portion  of 
the  line  particularly  entrusted  to  him  was  composed 
of  the  convents  of  San  Marcos  and  San  Agustin,  which 
lie  respectively  north  and  south  of  one  another,  and 
the  block  of  houses  between.  Puebla  is  built  in 
straight  streets  cutting  one  another  at  right  angles. 
The  houses  in  the  oblong  blocks,  known  as  "  man- 
zanas  "  in  Spanish,  are  closely  joined  and  inhabited 
in  flats.  The  President's  reminiscences  supply  a  lively 
picture  of  a  passage  of  street  fighting. 


70  DIAZ 

The  French  advanced  till  they  were  in  possession  of 
the  hospice  facing  San  Marcos,  and  were  piercing  the 
walls  in  order  to  bring  a  gun  to  bear  on  the  buildings 
opposite.  The  ground  floor  of  San  Marcos  was  occu- 
pied by  shops  on  either  side  of  the  "  zaguan  " — that 
is  to  say,  the  porch  and  passage  which  led  into  the 
courtyard,  the  central  "  patio  "  of  the  building.  The 
door  had  been  solidly  barricaded  with  flagstones  taken 
from  the  ground  of  the  zaguan  and  the  courtyard. 
An  opening  had  been  made  through  the  wall  at  the 
back  of  the  yard  to  allow  the  defenders  to  come  and 
go  without  exposing  themselves  in  the  open.  When 
the  French  had  pierced  the  wall  of  the  hospice,  they 
fired  into  the  San  Marcos  and  beat  in  the  front  of  the 
shop  to  the  right  of  the  porch,  and  attempted  to  rush 
the  building.  They  advanced  to  blow  in  the  door  of 
the  zaguan,  did  not  succeed,  and  then  they  forced 
their  way  in  through  the  shop. 

"  There  was,"  says  the  President,  ''  one  anxious 
moment  when  the  fury  of  the  French  charge  into  the 
courtyard  struck  my  soldiers  with  panic  so  that  they 
went  so  far  as  to  attempt  to  run,  but  the  narrowness 
of  the  opening  in  the  wall  would  not  allow  them  all  to 
get  off.  At  that  moment  I  fired  a  little  mortar  which 
I  had  in  the  yard  loaded  with  grape  shot,  and  let 
them  (i.e.,  the  French)  have  it  near  enough  to  singe 
their  beards  [a  quema  rofa  =  burn  their  clothes,  the 
equivalent  of  the  French  d  brule  pourpoint].  It 
scared  them  sufficiently  to  make  them  leave  the 
courtyard  they  were  just  about  to  occupy,  and  they 
ran  back  into  the  porch." 

One  of  the  Zouaves  in  the  attacking  party  made  a 
rush  at  Diaz,  who  stopped  him  by  hurling  a  revolver 
into  his  face.     He  fell,  either  from  the  force  of  the 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  71 

blow — which  was  no  doubt  severe,  for  Don  Porfirio 
was  by  all  testimony  a  very  strong  man — or  because 
he  was  wounded  at  that  moment  by  a  shot.  The 
President  never  indulges  in  the  Munchausen  vein  and 
generally  gives  ample  credit  to  his  friends  and 
subordinates.  On  this  occasion  he  records  the  stout 
help  given  him  by  one  of  his  corporals.  He  adds  a 
biographical  detail  which  deserves  to  be  repeated  for 
its  candid  simplicity.  The  revolver  was  a  second- 
hand one  and  out  of  order.  It  had  been  bought  in  a 
pawn-shop,  he  tells  us,  "  for  at  that  time  our  precuniary 
circumstances  were  bad."  ^ 

His  soldiers  now  rallied  and  forced  the  French  out. 
The  fighting  went  on  for  three  or  four  days.  The 
French  brought  guns  and  tried  to  master  houses  here 
and  there  by  forcing  their  way  into  front  rooms  and 
firing  into  and  across  the  patios.  The  result  commonly 
was  that  they  brought  the  roofs  down  on  their  own 
heads.  For  though  the  walls  of  these  old  buildings 
are  extremely  solid,  the  frequent  earthquakes  which 
afflict  Mexico  have  taught  the  wisdom  of  making  the 
roofs  light  so  that  they  collapse  easily  without  injury 
to  the  shell  of'the  house.  The  inhabitants  who  cannot 
get  clear  away  in  time  take  cover  in  the  thickness  of 
the  walls  at  doorways.  Diaz  contrived  to  hold  the 
San  Marcos.  When  the  French  renewed  the  attack 
and  again  tried  to  burst  into  the  building  through  the 
shop,  he  prepared  a  trap.     Holes  were  made  in  the 

1  For  the  benefit  of  possible  book-hunters  and  curiosity-seekers  in 
Spanish-speaking  countries  I  will  put  a  note  here  which  my  experience  tells 
me  will  not  be  superfluous.  The  adjective  "  viejo  "  (old)  means  second-hand. 
A  Itbro  viejo  or  pistol  a  vieja,  like  Don  Porfirio's  in  this  case,  is  a  second-hand 
book  or  pistol.  When  what  is  sought  is  a  book  or  pistol  or  any  other  article 
interesting  for  its  age  the  curio-hunter  should  be  careful  to  ask  for  a  libra 
antiguo  or  pistola  antigua.  The  Spaniards  never  err  in  their  use  of  the 
words,  and  the  blunders  of  foreigners,  who  usually  do,  are  the  cause  of 
innocent  merriment. 


72  DIAZ 

roof  and  hand  grenades  were  dropped  on  the  intruders. 
They  were  once  more  driven  out.  Diaz  tells  us  with 
perhaps  a  touch  of  not  ill-natured  malice  that  the 
officer  who  commanded  the  final  assault,  when 
deserted  by  his  men  and  called  on  to  surrender,  replied 
in  the  legendary  Cambronne  formula  "  The  Zouaves 
never  surrender  !  "  Nevertheless  he  did  when  it 
became  clear  that  he  would  be  shot  if  he  proved 
contumacious. 

The  President's  narrative  is  on  the  whole  borne  out 
by  the  French  version  of  the  story  given  in  Captain 
Niox's  History. 

A  few  days  of  this  work  convinced  Forey  that  he 
would  lose  more  men  than  he  could  afford  to  spend  if 
he  continued  in  his  attempt  to  take  the  town  house  by 
house.  He  suspended  these  attacks,  sent  for  heavier 
guns  from  the  French  men-of-war  in  the  Gulf,  and 
confined  himself  to  beating  off  the  feeble  efforts  of 
the  Mexicans  to  relieve  the  garrison  and  to  menacing 
the  outer  forts.  When  the  would-be  relieving  army 
had  been  routed  by  Forey's  subordinate  Bazaine  at 
San  Lorenzo  and  the  provisions  of  the  garrison  were 
nearly  exhausted  (though  it  was  afterwards  shown  that 
the  townsmen  had  hidden  considerable  stores  of  food), 
Ortega  tried  to  obtain  a  capitulation  and  the  honours 
of  war.  Forey  insisted  on  surrender  pure  and  simple. 
The  Mexicans  laid  down  their  arms  after  destroying 
their  ammunition.  Diaz  was  one  of  the  26  generals, 
303  field  officers,  and  1,179  company  officers  who  fell 
into  the  power  of  the  French.  It  was  quite  in  accord- 
ance with  the  established  rules  of  Mexican  warfare 
that  a  large  proportion  of  the  common  soldiers  taken 
were  at  once  incorporated  by  the  Conservative  leader 
Marquez,  who  had  joined  Forey,  in  his  own  ranks. 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  73 

Of  the  officers,  many  were  sent  to  France,  from  whence 
they  were  subsequently  allowed  to  return  on  the 
understanding,  or  in  the  hope,  that  they  would  join 
Maximilian.  Some  did  take  that  course.  A  large,' 
proportion  of  the  prisoners  contrived  to  escape  within' 
a  few  days.  Diaz  was  one  of  those  who  succeeded  in 
getting  away.  At  a  later  period  he  was  accused  of 
having  broken  his  parole,  but  he  always  denied  that 
he  had  given  it,  nor  could  it  ever  be  proved  that  he  had. 

When  free  he  hurried  to  report  to  Juarez  at  Mexico 
city.  Don  Benito  saw  that  after  the  fall  of  Puebla 
and  the  rout  at  San  Lorenzo  he  was  in  no  position  to 
offer  further  opposition  to  the  advance  of  the  French 
on  the  capital.  He  removed  his  Government  north- 
wards to  the  famous  old  mining  city,  San  Luis  de 
Potosi.  Diaz,  whose  rank  as  general  of  division  was 
confirmed  in  October,  1863,  was  commissioned  to 
raise  troops  in  the  province  of  Queretaro.  ''  The  city 
of  Mexico,"  said  Juarez,  "  will  be  just  one  town  more  in 
the  possession  of  the  French."  He  was  perfectly  right. 
The  occupation  of  the  capital  had  no  effect  whatever 
on  the  other  cities  and  provinces  of  the  Republic, 
which  had  never  followed  its  lead  and  enjoyed  local 
independence.  The  French  had  apparently  forgotten 
the  teaching  of  the  Peninsular  War  and  the  utter 
uselessness  to  them  of  the  occupation  of  Madrid. 
Forey  left  Puebla  on  June  4,  and  occupied  the  capital 
on  the  1 2th.  He  met  with  no  opposition.  All  the 
townsmen  asked  was  that  he  would  not  allow  Marquez 
to  enter  the  city.  When  they  were  assured  that  they 
would  be  protected  against  the  "  Tiger  of  Tacubaya  " 
and  his  cut-throats  they  decorated  their  houses  and 
welcomed  the  French  with  effusion. 

A  parody  of  Napoleon^s  scandalous  proceedings  at 


74  DIAZ 

Bayonne  in  1808  now  followed.  A  miscellaneous 
assembly  of  notables  was  held,  and  it  offered  the 
"  Crown  of  Montezuma  "  to  Maximilian.  The  vote 
of  this  scratch  collection  of  mere  insignificances  was 
made  to  do  duty  for  a  national  choice.  It  was  not 
what  Napoleon  and  Maximilian  had  hoped  for,  but 
they  had  committed  themselves  already.  The  Em- 
peror of  the  French  could  not  go  back  without  covering 
himself  with  ridicule.  After  the  repulse  at  Puebla  in 
May,  1862,  the  honour  of  the  French  arms  had  to  be 
vindicated.  A  foolish  enterprise  was  to  be  persisted 
in  because  it  had  been  begun.  A  provisional  Govern- 
ment conducted  affairs  in  the  name  of  the  Emperor 
MaximiHan  till  he  should  arrive — that  is  to  say,  it 
professed  to  be  the  Government  of  Mexico  wherever  a 
French  garrison  was  in  possession  on  the  line  of  com- 
munications from  Veracruz  to  the  capital  and  in  a  few 
places  to  right  or  to  left.  Everywhere  else  the 
government,  as  far  as  there  was  any,  was  conducted  in 
the  name  of  the  Republic  and  of  the  President  Juarez.  / 

The  unhappy  Archduke  and  his  still  more  unhappy 
wife,  Amelie  Charlotte  of  Belgium,  reached  Veracruz 
in  May,  1864,  en  mal  hora^  in  an  evil  hour  for  him  and 
for  her.  He  came  with  the  remnant  of  a  loan  raised 
by  the  help  of  Napoleon  and  burdened  by  a  heavy 
financial  obligation  which  he  was  totally  unable  to 
fulfil.  He  was  bound  to  support  the  French  army  of 
occupation  out  of  a  non-existent  revenue.  It  was  the 
French  army  which  had  to  support  him  out  of  its 
military  chest,  which  again  had  to  be  filled  from 
France. 

The  essential  folly  of  the  whole  venture  was  made 
manifest  from  the  day  that  the  Archduke  reached  his 
capital.     There  were  many  Mexicans  who  would  have 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  75 

accepted  a  good  Government  from  Maximilian  so  long 
as  they  were  not  called  on  to  make  efforts  or  undergo 
sacrifices  to  help  him.  There  was  only  one  body  of 
persons  in  Mexico  who  would  or  could  have  given  him 
effective  support.  They  were  the  Clericals,  and  their 
help  was  to  be  had  on  their  terms  only.  The  con- 
ditions they  would  have  imposed  may  be  fairly  said 
to  have  been  all  that  Hildebrand  or  Boniface  VHI. 
would  have  claimed  or  Pius  IX.  would  have  insisted 
on  if  he  could.  They  asked  for  nothing  less  than  the 
entire  subordination  of  the  State  to  the  Church,  the 
restoration  of  all  Church  land,  the  suppression  of  aU 
freedom  of  worship  and  opinion.  Now  it  was  mani- 
festly impossible  for  an  Austrian  archduke  to  submit 
to  such  demands.  It  was  still  more  impossible  for 
Napoleon  III.  He  would  have  helped  the  Church  if 
it  had  allowed  him,  but  no  ruler  of  Frenchmen  could 
dare  to  make  so  abject  a  submission  to  Clerical  pre- 
tensions. The  Mexican  Clericals  were  not  amenable 
to  reason.  They  would  not  listen  ;  they  scorned  all 
appeals  to  show  moderation  and  accept  facts.  They 
would  assert  and  demand  all  as  a  right  not  to  be 
discussed. 

As  it  was  impossible  to  work  with  the  Church, 
Maximilian  had  to  fall  back  on  efforts  to  win  the  sup- 
port of  the  Liberals.  When  he  tried  to  govern  as  a 
Mexican  ruler,  he  soon  came  into  collision  with  the 
French.  When  he  supported  the  French,  he  offended 
the  Mexicans.  Add  to  this  that  the  United  States 
would  never  recognise  his  Government,  though  he 
debased  himself  to  humble  solicitations.  When  the 
cause  of  the  Confederacy  declined  and  fell,  it  became 
obvious  that  the  Union  would  insist  on  the  with- 
drawal of  the  French  troops.    So  long  as  they  remained 


76  DIAZ 

they  could  easily  scatter  the  armed  mobs  which  were 
called  Republican  armies  ;  but  they  never  succeeded 
in  driving  Juarez  over  the  border,  though  he  was  so 
hard  pressed  as  to  be  forced  to  send  his  family  for 
safety  to  American  territory,  and  while  he  remained 
in  any  corner  of  the  country,  though  it  were  only  in 
some  out-of-the-way  hiding-place  in  the  deserts  of 
Chihuahua,  the  Republican  Government  was  in  being. 
No  more  need  be  said  of  the  war  in  Northern 
Mexico.  The  field  of  activity  assigned  to  Porfirio 
Diaz  was  in  his  native  South.  In  October,  1863,  he 
received  a  commission  which  had  perhaps  more  to  do 
with  his  future  importance  than  any  other  incident 
in  his  career  so  far.  He  was  appointed  to  take  2,800 
men  raised  in  the  North  and  to  march  across  Central 
Mexico  to  Oaxaca.  His  command  was  to  be  known 
as  the  Army  of  the  East  and  was  to  include  the  pro- 
vinces of  Guerrero,  Puebla,  and  Oaxaca.  To  reach 
his  command  he  had  to  pass  the  line  of  communication 
of  the  French  army,  watched  as  it  was  by  30,000  men, 
including  the  "  traitors  "  who  had  joined  the  invaders. 
In  so  far  as  the  necessity  for  avoiding  armed  forces 
was  concerned,  the  difficulties  of  the  feat  were  not 
very  formidable.  Thirty  thousand  men  are  but  few 
to  watch  vast  spaces  of  country  thinly  inhabited  and 
full  of  mountains.  Allowing  for  his  own  knowledge 
and  the  help  of  local  guides,  allowing,  too,  for  his 
freedom  from  the  embarrassment  of  a  heavy  train  of 
artillery  and  ammunition  wagons,  to  avoid  an  inter- 
cepting force  was  a  comparatively  small  matter. 
The  real  difficulty  rather  began  when  the  French  line 
of  communication  was  crossed,  and  the  march  had  to 
be  completed  through  mountains  covered  by  dense 
forest  where  no  roads  were,   and  when   even  local 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  77 

knowledge  failed  so  utterly  that  it  was  necessary  to 
march  by  the  compass  and  explore  as  he  went. 
The  considerable  powers  of  endurance  of  the  Mexican 
Indian  soldiers  were  sharply  tested,  and  there  was 
probably  no  passage  in  his  life  in  which  Don  Porfirio 
benefited  more  by  his  early  love  of  sport  on  the  hillside 
and  practice  as  a  cragsman. 

A  glance  at  a  fairly  good  map  will  do  more  to  make 
the  march  intelligible  than  any  amount  of  words. 
The  starting-point  was  at  Amalco,  to  the  south  of 
Queretaro.  From  Amalco  it  was  necessary  to  take  a 
sweep  out  to  the  west  and  then  round  south  by 
Molinos  de  Caballero,  Aguangueo,  Orocutia,  Laureles, 
Los  Arcos,  Almaloya,  Soltepec,  and  Zacualpam  in 
order  to  avoid  the  French  force  stationed  at  Toluca, 
to  the  south-west  of  the  city  of  Mexico.  From  Zacual- 
pam Diaz  and  his  little  army  had  to  turn  south-east 
to  reach  Oaxaca.  In  front  of  them  was  Tazco  or 
Tasco,  a  small  place  held  by  a  native  force  under 
French  command.  Diaz  did  not  think  it  necessary  to 
avoid  this  obstacle.  On  October  26,  27,  and  28,  he 
assailed  and  took  it,  capturing  a  supply  of  useful 
weapons.  From  Tazco  he  marched  by  many  places 
of  names  exotic  and  sonorous — Tepecuacuilco,  Atlix- 
taca,  Ixcatiopa,  Xilaca-yoapas,  Huitezco,  south- 
east to  Oaxaca.  The  reader  who  follows  the  route  wiU 
see  that  it  led  across,  and  recrossed,  several  chains  of 
mountains,  hills  which  go  to  make  up  the  great  Sierra 
Madre,  many  rivers  which  are  in  fact  mountain 
torrents,  and  across  much  sub-tropical  forest. 

It  was  not  till  the  end  of  November  that  Diaz, 
marching  like  the  knight-errant  of  the  Spanish  ballad, 
"  De  Sierra  en  Sierra,  por  orillas  de  la  mar  "  ("  From 
hills  to  hills  by  the  seashore  "),  reached  Oaxaca,  where 


78  DIAZ 

he  found  a  state  of  things  very  characteristic  of  a 
country  distracted  between  anarchy  and  foreign 
invasion.  So  far  the  provisional  Government,  or  the 
French  generals,  without  whose  direction  nothing 
could  be  done,  had  been  too  busy  in  the  centre  and  the 
north  to  pay  attention  to  the  south.  The  Southerners, 
Sudenos  in  native  speech,  were  well  disposed  to  stay 
quiet  so  long  as  they  were  left  alone,  and  Cajiga,  the 
Governor  of  Oaxaca,  with  his  secretary,  Esperon,  had 
in  fact  made  an  arrangement  with  the  provisional 
Government  whereby  the  State  agreed  to  remain  quiet 
if  it  were  not  attacked,  and  to  await  the  taking  of  a 
national  vote.  In  plain  Castilian  this  meant  that 
Oaxaca  would  fall  into  line  if  the  provisional  Govern- 
ment could  rid  itself  of  Juarez — provided,  of  course, 
that  the  local  interests  of  local  politicians  were  fairly 
considered.  The  intrusion  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  a  man 
with  local  connections,  at  the  head  of  an  armed  force 
recruited  so  far  away  as  Queretaro  and  the  still  more 
distant  provinces  of  Sinaloa  and  Sonora,  was  most 
unwelcome  to  Governor  Cajiga  and  his  secretary,  and 
indeed  to  all  who  preferred  a  quiet  life. 

When  the  Governor  met  Diaz  he  began  by  pointing 
out  that  the  large  powers  given  to  the  General  were 
unconstitutional — a  common  malady  with  "  powers  " 
in  Mexico — and  went  on  to  ask  whether  he  intended 
to  make  use  of  force.  Don  Porfirio  states  in  connec- 
tion with  a  later  passage  of  history  at  Oaxaca  that  it 
was  his  custom  to  use  ferocious  language  in  ordfer  to 
spare  himself  the  painful  necessity  of  taking  harsh 
measures.  So  he  answered  in,  as  we  can  imagine,  a 
significant  tone  that  he  certainly  would  use  force 
against  the  French  and  all  traitors.  The  hint  was 
plain  and  effective.     Cajiga   and  Esperon  travelled 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  79 

rapidly  to  Mexico,  leaving  the  State  of  Oaxaca 
headless.  Constitutional  pedantries  were  out  of  place 
at  such  a  crisis.  Diaz  stepped  into  the  Governor's 
place,  and  appointed  as  his  secretary  his  trusty  friend, 
Justo  Benitez.  All  lovers  of  a  quiet  life  accepted 
these  irregular,  but  in  Spanish  America  normal, 
proceedings  with  passivity. 

Don  Porfirio  now  began  to  organise  the  three  pro- 
vinces put  under  his  command  to  take  an  active  part 
in  the  war.  Another  glance  at  the  map  will  show  that 
Puebla,  Guerrero,  and  Oaxaca  were  of  the  highest 
importance  to  the  national  Government  for  a  reason 
apart  from  the  revenue  they  could  contribute  to  the 
general  treasury  of  the  Republic.  They  flank  the 
whole  line  of  communications  from  Veracruz  to  the 
capital,  and  from  the  capital  to  the  Pacific  coast  at 
Acapulco.  So  long  as  they  remained  in  the  hands  of 
the  Republicans  they  constituted  a  perpetual  menace 
to  the  provisional  or  imperial  Government  and  tied 
down  a  large  proportion  of  its  troops.  If  they  had 
been  patriotically  zealous  they  could  have  made  it 
impossible  for  Bazaine,  who  had  succeeded  to  the 
command  of  the  French  army  when  Forey  was  recalled 
in  October,  1863,  "^^  carry  out  operations  against 
Juarez  in  tlie  north.  If  they  had  no  such  influence 
the  reason  simply  was  that,  as  Diaz  shows  very  plainly 
in  his  reminiscences,  the  people  were  not  zealous. 
When  the  Empire  had  fallen  because  the  only  prop 
which  upheld  it — namely,  the  French  army — ^had 
been  withdrawn  in  obedience  to  the  menaces  of  the 
United  States,  it  became  the  custom  to  speak  of  this 
war  as  a  struggle  between  the  outraged  patriotism 
of  a  whole  people  and  a  foreign  invader  supported  by 
a  few  traitors.     The  reality  was  very  different.     The 


8o  DIAZ 

war  was  a  struggle  between  a  French  army  which  was 
absurdly  unequal  in  numbers  to  the  task  of  occupying 
a  country  of  769,000  square  miles  in  size,  full  of  rugged 
mountain  chains,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
that  part  of  the  population,  which  had  ever  been  in 
arms  against  some  Government,  and  which  had  ever 
used  those  same  mountain  fastnesses  as  places  of  arms 
and  of  refuge.  The  mass  of  the  population  was  passive 
and  would  do  nothing  to  help  or  to  hinder  either  side 
except  under  pressure. 

As  the  Republican  army  could  not  be  organised  into 
an  effective  force  for  offensive  operations,  and  as  the 
French  were  too  busy  elsewhere  to  advance,  months 
passed  before  anything  happened.  Moreover,  a 
French  army  could  not  move  like  an  encampment  of 
Bedouins,  using  its  women  as  army  service  corps,  and 
going,  as  the  sailors  might  say,  "  flying  light."  It 
needed  a  battering  train  and  the  usual  impedimenta 
of  a  regular  army.  Now  the  south  and  south-east 
of  Mexico  are  separated  from  the  centre  by  rugged 
mountain  country,  in  which  the  roads  were  mere 
tracks,  often  mere  beds  of  torrents  winding  between 
upright  cliffs  of  bare  rock,  and  crossed  by  "  barrancas  " 
or  precipitous-sided  beds  of  rivers,  and  canons,  sheer 
fissures  of  great  depth.  There  were  places  on  the  line 
from  Mexico  to  Oaxaca  where  it  was  necessary  to 
wind  for  three  or  four  miles  in  order  to  get  from  one 
side  to  another  of  a  narrow  valley.  The  indispensable 
preliminary  to  an  advance  on  Oaxaca  was  the  con- 
struction of  a  road,  and  to  that  Bazaine  applied  him- 
self. The  campaign  at  the  end  of  1864  and  the  begin- 
ning of  1865  was  made  up  of  the  construction  of  the 
road  and  the  fall  of  the  city. 

During   the   first   half   of    1864   Bazaine   CQufijaQci 


THE'.;  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  8r 

himself  to  pushing  his  outposts  down  to,  or  a  little 
beyond,  the  i8th  degree  of  latitude.  By  this  measure 
of  precaution  he  covered  the  province  of  Puebla  and 
confined  Diaz  to  Oaxaca.  The  French  advanced, 
road-making  as  they  went  along.  They  found  no 
difficulty  in  obtaining  native  labour  for  pay.  On  the 
contrary,  the  population  welcomed  them,  and  com- 
plained bitterly  of  the  exactions  of  the  Republican 
leaders.  If  Diaz  had  had  the  measure  of  active 
support  which  Mina  and  other  guerrillero  chiefs  found 
in  Navarre  and  Catalonia  during  the  Peninsular  War, 
he  would  have  made  the  French  pay  dear  for  every 
step  in  that  advance.  There  was  no  lack  of  effort  on 
his  part.  In  August,  when  the  French  attack  was 
beginning  to  develop,  he  dashed  at  them  fiercely  and 
on  the  best  guerrillero  principles,  making  false  attacks 
to  cover  rapid  marches  across  hill  and  dale,  and  falling 
on  posts  he  had  selected  for  attack.  But  when  it 
came  to  actual  hand-strokes  his  men  would  not  stand 
up  to  the  French.  Even  when  he  caught  a  small 
detachment  of  his  enemy  bathing  and  assailed  them, 
they  seized  their  rifles,  fought  naked,  and  the  Mexicans 
were  beaten  off.  General  Brincourt,  who  was  in 
immediate  command,  drove  the  Republicans  before 
him  and  advanced  to  within  sixty  miles  of  Oaxaca. 
He  was  convinced  that  he  could  get  the  town  by  a 
quick  attack.  Bazaine,  however,  thought  the  advance 
would  be  premature  till  the  communications  were 
opened  by  the  making  of  the  road.  Brincourt  was 
ordered  to  establish  an  advanced  post  at  Yanhuitlan, 
and  withdrew  his  main  force.  Bazaine  reserved  the 
occupation  of  the  city  for  the  time  when  it  could  be 
done  solidly,  and  for  himself. 

Both  sides  now  fell  to  work  with  spade  and  pick, 


S2  DIAZ 

the  French  at  road-making  and  Diaz  in  the  fortifica-  \ 
tions  of  Oaxaca.  Mexico  gained  lasting  advantage 
from  the  road,  but  the  fortifications  turned  out  to  be 
of  no  use  even  for  their  immediate  purpose.  The 
fact  was  that  the  position  of  the  Republican  general  / 
was  a  hopeless  one.  Many  of  his  subordinates  were  ^ 
deserting  him.  Officers  of  high  rank  went  off  either 
to  submit  to  the  Emperor  or  to  take  to  guerrillero 
fighting,  with  its  attendant  advantage  of  contribution- 
raising.  Throughout  the  whole  campaign,  which 
ended  with  the  occupation  of  Oaxaca  by  the  French 
in  February,  1865,  the  national  guards  of  the  smaller 
towns  either  refused  all  obedience  to  the  Republican 
Government  and  stood  aside  from  the  struggle  entirely, 
or  they  openly  joined  the  Empire.  This  was  in  fact 
the  period  when  the  Republican  Government  was  at 
the  lowest  and  when  Maximilian  could  claim  to  be 
gaining  ground.  The  Civil  War  in  the  United  States 
was  at  its  height.  General  Sherman  had  not  yet  / 
exposed  the  hollowness  of  the  Confederacy  by  his/ 
march  from  Atlanta  to  Savannah.  Many  Mexicans/ 
of  note  who  had  hitherto  remained  loyal  to  thef 
national  cause  now  made  their  submission  to  Maxi- 
milian. Among  them  was  General  Uraga,  undei' 
whom  Diaz  had  served  in  earlier  years.  Uraga  made 
an  attempt  to  draw  him  over  to  the  cause  of  the  Empire. 
If  he  had  succeeded  he  would  have  rendered  his  new 
master  appreciable  service.  The  adhesion  of  the 
Governor  of  Oaxaca  would  have  carried  with  it  the 
submission  of  the  whole  south  of  the  country  and  a 
valuable  addition  to  the  resources  of  the  empty 
treasury  of  the  Empire,  and  that  without  the  need  for 
any  sacrifice  of  men  or  money  on  the  part  of  the  new 
Government.     Maximilian  and  the  Mexican  advisers 


THE   FRENCH  INTERVENTION  83 

he  drew  about  him  would  have  had  good  reason  to 
rejoice  if  such  an  important  gain  could  have  been 
made  without  the  aid  of  the  French.  They  were  very 
restive  under  the  dictation  of  Bazaine. 

Uraga  sent  his  son  Luis  with  a  letter  to  Diaz.     We 
cannot  suppose  that  this  was  the  actual  beginning  of 
their  correspondence.     Luis  Uraga  would  hardly  have 
been  sent  into  the  lion's  den  unless  some  security  had 
been  given  for  his  safe  return.    There  is  no  probability, 
and  there  is  certainly  no  evidence,  that  Diaz  ever 
meant  to  desert  his  party.     But  he  may  have  been 
not  unwilling  to  take  advantage  of  an  opportunity 
offered  him  by  the  other  side  to  affirm  his  loyalty. 
Uraga's  letter,  which  reached  Oaxaca  in  November, 
was  plausible,  and  it  gave  Diaz  reasons  of  an  honour- 
able, or  at  least  of  a  decent,  kind  why  he  should  follow 
the  example  set  by  the  writer.     The  converted  Liberal 
general  pointed  out  that  the  Republican  armies  were 
all  scattered  and  that  a  prolongation  of  guerrillero 
warfare,  with  its  usual  accompaniments  of  raids  and 
extortion  of  contributions,  could  bring  nothing  but 
misery  on  Mexico.     He  protested  that  he  was  not 
asking  his  friend  to  give  his  aid  to  a  French  annexation 
of  Mexico.    He  declared  that  if  he  thought  the  national 
independence  to  be  menaced  he  would  have  continued 
to  resist  to  the  last.     But  he  was  convinced  that  the 
independence  of  Mexico  was  quite  safe  under  Maxi- 
milian and  that  a  constitutional  monarchy  offered 
the  best  of  guarantees  for  good  government  in  the 
future.     The  letter  was  indeed  written  with  all  the 
instinctive  understanding  of  a  Spaniard  or  superior 
stamp  of  Spanish-American  how  to  say  what  you  have 
to  say  with  the  air  becoming  to  a  gentleman  and  with 
dignity. 

G   S 


84  DIAZ 

The  weakness  of  Uraga's  plea  was  one  of  which 
he  was  perhaps  not  himself  conscious.  The  deadly 
readiness  of  men  of  Spanish  blood  to  confound  the 
fine  word  with  the  substantial  fact  may  have  misled 
him,  as  it  has  done,  and  daily  does,  many  others. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  general's  letter  (nor  was  there 
in  the  notorious  facts  of  the  case)  to  show  that  Maxi- 
milian's Government  could  live  for  six  months  if  the 
French  army  were  withdrawn.  Without  its  aid 
the  Emperor  would  be  even  less  able  to  support  him- 
self than  the  native  Presidents  who  had  come  up  and 
had  gone  down  at  the  rate  of  about  one  a  year.  If 
he  had  not  known  this,  why  did  he  endeavour  to 
recruit  bands  of  Belgian  and  Austrian  soldiers  of 
fortune  ? 

Now,  even  if  we  refuse  to  allow  Poriirio  Diaz  the 
credit  of  having  acted  on  principle  and  from  patriotic 
feeling  (which  we  have  no  right  to  do  without  evidence) 
he  was  certainly  a  man  of  sufficient  native  sagacity  to 
see  what  was  patent  to  others.  If  the  Empire  was 
wholly  dependent  on  the  continued  assistance  of  a 
French  army,  it  was  a  farce  to  talk  of  national  inde- 
pendence. And,  unless  there  was  a  guarantee  for  a 
continued  French  occupation,  no  one  who  joined 
Maximilian  could  have  any  security  for  the  future. 
Don  Porfirio  professed  his  belief  in  the  final  victory  of 
the  national  cause  and  declined  to  take  Uraga's 
advice.^ 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  go  into  the  details  of 
the  fall  of  Oaxaca  in  February,  1865.  The  measures 
which  Don  Porfirio  had  taken  to  put  the  town  in  a 

^  I  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  quote  the  letter  he  sent  in  answer 
to  Uraga's.  Tt  is  verbose,  and  is  written  in  the  involved  gerundial  style  of 
modern  Spanish-speaking  officialdom.  The  mere  wording  of  the  document 
was  probably  due  to  Justo  Benitez. 


THE  FRENCH  INTERVENTION  85 

state  to  be  defended,  and  most  especially  his  destruc- 
tion of  a  number  of  houses  for  the  purpose  of  depriving 
a  besieging  army  of  cover,  had  caused  deep  offence. 
Desertions  grew  more  frequent,  the  townsmen  were 
sulkily  hostile,  there  was  no  prospect  of  help  from 
without.  Indeed,  the  only  support  Don  Porfirio  had 
was  a  small  mounted  guerrilla  led  by  his  brother  El 
Chato.  When  Bazaine  had  once  drawn  his  lines  round 
the  town  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  save  to  sur- 
render. It  may  well  be  that  if  Don  Porfirio  had  not 
ridden  out  to  surrender  on  February  8  he  would  have 
been  betrayed  by  some  of  his  followers. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    RISE    TO    THE    FIRST    RANK 

When  Diaz,  accompanied  by  two  of  his  officers, 
presented  himself  at  Bazaine's  headquarters,  the 
marshal  came  to  what  was  in  the  circumstances  a  very- 
natural  conclusion.  He  thought  that  the  Mexican 
general  was  about  to  do  as  many  of  his  countrymen 
had  recently  done — namely,  make  his  submission  to 
the  Emperor.  On  the  face  of  it  there  was  no  other 
explanation  of  a  hurried  surrender.  Yet  we  have 
not  only  the  assurance  of  Don  Porfirio  himself,  but  a 
long  succession  of  patent  facts,  to  prove  that  Bazaine 
was  entirely  mistaken.  The  Mexican  general  sur- 
rendered because  he  knew  that  his  garrison  was  not  to 
be  relied  on,  and  he  took  the  most  unusual  course  of 
coming  out  with  the  white  flag  himself  because  he 
could  not  trust  any  of  his  subordinates  not  to  play 
him  some  ugly  trick. 

Bazaine,  we  are  told  by  Don  Porfirio,  showed  very 
bad  temper  when  he  was  forced  to  see  that  he  was  in 
error.  He  accused  his  prisoner  of  having  broken 
promises  given  at  Puebla,  and  more  than  hinted  at  a 
firing  party.  Diaz  denied  that  he  had  given  his  parole 
in  1863  or  that  he  had  ever  promised  to  join  Maxi- 
milian. A  reference  was  made  to  the  record  taken 
when  Puebla  had  surrendered,  and  it  was  found  that 
Diaz  was  right.  He  had  not  only  refused  to  give  his 
parole,  but  had  declared  that  he  would  not  adhere  to 
the  Government  set  up  under  cover  of  the  French 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       87 

intervention.  Bazaine  was  not  the  man  to  be  deterred 
from  strong  measures  by  formalities.  But  in  February, 
1865,  it  was  becoming  clear  that  the  French  must 
look  carefully  to  their  going.  He  abstained  from 
taking  a  course  which  would  have  tended  to  scandal. 
The  garrison  of  Oaxaca  was  disposed  of  in  the  usual 
way.  The  local  levies  were  sent  back  to  their  homes — 
nothing  loth.  Those  who  had  been  drawn  from  the 
north  were  either  sent  back,  or  were  incorporated  in 
the  Emperor's  unpaid  and  barely  disciplined  Mexican 
levies,  from  which  they  in  due  course  deserted,  some- 
times in  whole  companies  with  their  officers  at  their 
head.  Diaz  was  sent  to  Puebla,  well  treated  but 
closely  watched. 

At  Puebla  he  remained  till  September  15  of  1865. 
After  the  disastrous,  the  indeed  all  but  ridiculous,  end 
of  his  command  of  the  Army  of  the  East,  it  might  well 
seem  that  his  career  was  over  even  in  such  a  country 
as  Mexico.  Yet  he  stood  higher  than  ever  in  the 
estimate  of  his  party.  His  failure  was  not  due  to  any 
fault  of  his  own.  He  would  have  fought  if  his  men 
would  have  followed  him,  and  amid  the  many  and 
scandalous  defections  of  1864  he  had  been  found 
faithful. 

Don  Porfirio  does  not  say  it,  nor  is  the  thing  one  of 
those  which  men  freely  say,  but  we  may  safely  assume 
that  he  was  well  content  to  remain  for  some  months 
quietly  in  Puebla  under  charge  of  the  Emperor's 
Austrian  officers.  There  was  for  the  moment  little 
good  to  be  done  in  the  field,  but  a  man  of  his  know- 
ledge and  experience  must  have  felt  confident  that 
an  opportunity  to  reappear  with  effect  would  present 
itself  before  long.  The  decisive  events  of  that  quiet 
interval  did_^not  take  place  in  Mexico.     They  were  the 


88  DIAZ 

occupation    of    Savannah    by    the    Federal    general 
Sherman  in  December,  1864,  and  the  surrender  of  Lee 
at  Appomatox  in  April,  1865.     The  full  significance 
of  the  march  from  Atlanta  to  Savannah  may  not  have 
been  visible  for  some  little  time,  but  the  mere  report 
that  the  event  had  happened  was  enough  to  enlighten 
the  most  obtuse  of  mankind  as  to  the  meaning  of 
the  capitulation  of  the  commander  of   the  army  of 
Northern  Virginia.     The  Confederacy  was  fairly  down 
with    both    shoulders    on     the    ground.      However 
ignorant  Mexicans  might  be  of  what  passed  outside 
their  own  range  of  vision,  one  fact  was  brought  home 
to  them  with  convincing  force.     It  was  that  some 
thousands  of  the  Confederates  had  fled  across  the  Rio 
Grande  del  Norte  into  Mexico.     Then  there  was  talk 
of  grand  schemes  for  settling  these  refugees  in  the 
country,  and  also  whatever  numbers  of  others  might 
join  them  later  on.     No  course  more  exactly  calcu- 
lated to  exasperate  every  class  of  Mexican  against  the 
imperial    Government    could    possibly    have     been 
devised.     From  the  hacendado  with  his  millions  of 
acres  down  to  the   Indian   "  peon  "   there  was  one 
common  revolt  at  the  mere  suggestion  that  swarms  of 
Norte-Americanos,  or,  to  use  the  popular  name  given 
them,   "  gringos,"   all  armed,   all  prompt   to  shoot? 
pushful  and  overbearing,  would  be  settled  among  them. 
All  could  remember  what  had  come  of  the  settlement 
of   Sam   Houston    and   his   supporters   in    the   once 
Mexican  province  of  Texas.     They  had  been  Souther- 
ners, and  it  was  precisely  the  old  slave-holding  States 
forming  the  Confederacy  which  had  brought  on  the 
war  of  1848  and  had  robbed  Mexico  of  much  of  its 
territory.     The   suggestion  was   so   ill  received   that 
nothing  came  of  it.     Nothing  came  of  a  not  dissimilar 


THE   RISE   TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       89 

scheme  for  settling  a  French  colony  in  Sonora.  But 
the  suggestions  had  been  made,  and  they  were  equally 
offensive  to  Mexicans  and  to  the  United  States. 
Mexicans  who  had  once  been  disposed  to  agree  with 
Uraga  that  their  national  independence  was  safe  with 
Maximilian  began  to  think  that  it  was  more  threatened 
by  him  and  his  French  supporters  than  by  anybody 
else.  The  Federal  Government  would  tolerate  neither 
French  nor  Confederate  colonies  on  its  borders. 
Napoleon  III.  never  made  a  greater  mistake  than  when 
he  permitted  himself  to  think  aloud  in  his  corre- 
spondence and  to  tell  General  Forey  that  it  was  his 
purpose  to  check  the  expansion  of  the  United  States 
over  Latin  America. 

There  was  no  concealment  of  the  fact  that  the 
Government  of  Washington  was  pressing  Napoleon  III. 
for  an  answer  to  the  pointed  question  when  he  meant 
to  withdraw  his  troops.  When  they  were  gone  there 
could  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  utterly  artificial 
Empire  of  Maximilian  would  be  brought  down  like  a 
card  castle.  There  is  a  close  parallel  between  the 
Empire  of  Maximilian  in  Mexico  and  the  monarchy  of 
Joseph  Bonaparte  in  Spain.  The  Spaniards  would 
certainly  never  have  been  able  to  drive  the  French 
armies  from  their  country  by  themselves,  but  if 
Napoleon  had  left  his  brother  to  fight  with  no  better 
support  than  he  could  get  from  his  Spanish  partisans 
the  patriot  forces  would  have  made  short  work  of  him. 
Yet  if  the  Spaniards  had  frankly  accepted  Joseph, 
then  Wellington  could  never  have  forced  the  French 
to  retire.  If  the  Mexicans  had  submitted  honestly  to 
Maximilian  the  United  States  would  have  had  no 
ground  for  interference.  In  both  cases  native  resist- 
ance gave  the  intervention  of  an  allied  force  the  means 


90  DIAZ 

of  proving  decisive.  Both  countries  would  have 
spared  themselves  infinite  misery  if  they  could  have 
taken  the  intruding  ruler  who  demanded  their  sub- 
mission. But  nations  do  not  live  by  material  advan- 
tages, or  common  sense,  alone,  and  the  ages  in  which 
any  people  could  accept  a  lost  battle  as  a  judgment  of 
God,  and  bow  for  their  own  ultimate  great  good  to  a 
William  the  Conqueror,  lie  far  back  in  the  past. 

For  eight  months  Diaz  remained  a  prisoner.     His 
relations  with  his  jailers,  Austrian  officers,  were  on  the 
whole  pleasant.     When  after  a  time  he  found  himself 
placed  under  the  care  of  Count  Thun  he  was  indeed 
very  closely  watched,   and  suffered,  he  says,   some 
discourtesy.     Thun  tried  to  persuade  him  to  write  a 
letter  to  the  patriot  General  Lucas,  who  was  threaten- 
ing   to    shoot    certain    imperialist    prisoners.     Diaz 
refused  to  comply  with  a  request  which  would  cer- 
tainly have  compromised  himself,  and  would  probably 
have   done   no   service   to   the   threatened   captives. 
The    Austrian    governor    retaliated    by   making   his 
captivity  more  strict.     He  was  not  even  allowed  to 
go  to  the  bath  except  with  a  sentinel  to  watch.     Yet 
his  confinement  cannot  have  been  very  rigid.     From 
his  own  account  we  hear  of  card  parties  with  his 
fellow-Mexican  prisoners  and  Austrian  officers.     When 
he  had  finally  decided  to  effect  another  escape  he  had 
no  difficulty  in  opening  communications  with  friends 
outside.     His  trusted  agent  was  an  Indian  of  the  name 
of  Hernandez,  who  had  been  a  servant  of  his  family. 
Diaz  could  rely  implicitly  on  the  man's  fidelity,  but  not 
altogether   on   his   discretion.     When   the   time   for 
making  the  escape  had  come  he  instructed  his  follower 
to  wait  with  a  horse  at  a  place  he  named,  but  did  not 
say  that  the  mount  was  needed  for  himself ;  Hernandez 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST   RANK       91 

was  told  that  he  would  be  met  by  a  prisoner  who 
was  about  to  escape.  In  order  that  he  might  be  sure 
to  give  the  horse  to  the  right  man  he  was  supplied  with 
the  half  of  a  visiting  card,  and  told  that  the  other 
would  be  presented  by  the  escaping  prisoner.  If  the 
precaution,  which  reads  like  a  quotation  from  the 
memoirs  of  some  hero  of  the  Fronde,  strikes  the  reader 
as  a  needless  refinement,  he  must  remember  that  Diaz 
knew  his  countrymen. 

When  the  night  fixed  for  his  escape  had  come,  Don 
Porfirio  took  a  rope  which  he  had  provided  with  the 
help  of  a  friend — a  proof  that  the  watch  kept  on  him 
was  not  very  thorough — and  made  his  way  from  the 
flat  roof  of  the  convent  of  Sta.  Caterina  in  which  he 
was   confined   to   the    roof   of   an    adjoining   house. 
Beyond  this  house  was  a  yard,  or  garden,  enclosed  by 
a  wall  which  ran  from  the  corner  of  the  building.     His 
plan  was  to  let  himself  down  from  the  edge  of  the  roof 
to  the  wall  and  then  drop  into  the  street.     The  only 
support  he  could  find  for  his  rope  was  the  lead  figure 
of  a  saint.     He  found  it  very  shaky,  but  calculated 
that  it  was  fixed,  though  loosely,  on  a  spike.     The 
rope  was  tied  round  the  pedestal,  and  Don  Porfirio, 
who  retained  his  power  of  swarming  up  a  rope  till  an 
advanced   age,  had   no  difficulty  in   letting   himself 
down.     The  street  was  empty,  and  all  went  well  till 
he  got  down  to  the  level  of  the  wall.     When  he  let  go 
of  the  rope  thinking  to  land  on  the  coping  of  the  wall 
he  missed  his  footing,  and  fell  inside  right  on  the  top 
of  a  stye  full  of  pigs.     He  fell  soft  on  the  startled 
porkers,  but  rolled  over  and  lost  the  only  weapon 
he  carried — a  well-sharpened  knife,  the  weapon  which 
by  various  names  of  "  navajo,"  "  punal,"  "  curvo," 
or  "  falcon  "  comes  kindly  to  the  hand  of  the  Spaniard 


92  DIAZ 

and  the  Creole.  The  squeaking  of  the  alarmed  pigs 
rent  the  air,  but  the  noise  was  too  familiar  to  attract 
unwelcome  attention.  Diaz  picked  himself  up,  found 
a  place  where  he  could  clear  the  wall,  dropped  into 
the  street,  and  walking  without  undue  haste,  passing 
civil  salutations  with  the  stray  night-walkers  he  met — 
•'  Buena  noche  "  ;  "  Vaya  listed,  con  Dios  "  ("  Good- 
night "  and  "  God  go  with  you  ") — reached  the  place 
where  his  henchman  was  waiting  for  him  with  a 
horse.  When  once  he  was  mounted  he  lost  no  time  in 
making  his  way  to  the  home  of  the  guerrillero,  the 
Sierra.  A  municipal  official  whom  he  met  turned  out 
to  be  a  sympathiser,  and  gave  him  a  useful  hint  where 
to  meet  other  friends.  The  alarm  was  indeed  raised 
and  bells  rung,  but  he  was  off  and  beyond  reach.  ' 

Now  began  what  one  biographer.  Dr.  Fortunato 
Hernandez,  has  called  the  "  epic  "  of  Porfirio  Diaz. 
To  put  it  less  poetically,  the  next  year  of  the  future 
President's  life  may  be  justly  said  to  give  us  an  exact 
picture  of  the  rise  of  a  highly  capable  guerrillero. 
He  meets  a  few  friends  who  follow  his  fortune.  With 
them  he  overcomes  a  few  enemies  and  takes  their 
weapons.  Yet  other  friends  who  will  use  the  arms 
under  his  direction  are  soon  recruited,  and  so  the  ball 
rolls  till,  one  having  become  a  few,  the  few  become 
many.  The  band  grows  into  an  army.  It  is  the 
history  of  Mina,  of  El  Empecinado,  of  Chapalangarra, 
of  Julian  Sanchez,  of  Jose  Palarea  (called  El  Medico), 
of  a  whole  brood  of  heroes  of  the  Peninsular  War,  and 
of  Spanish  America.  It  would  be  amusing  enough  to 
follow  the  apparently  erratic  movements,  the  astute 
stratagems,  the  surprises,  starts,  escapes,  swift  hand- 
to-hand  skirmishes,  which  make  up  the  guerrillero's 
career.     But  we  must  resist  the  temptation  to  dwell 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       93 

at  excessive  length  on  these  adventures.  After  all, 
they  were  not  in  the  case  of  Porfirio  Diaz  different 
from  those  of  other  "  cabecillas,"  or  heads  of  guerrillas. 
There  were  others — his  own  brother  Felix  (El  Chato) 
for  one — who  played  the  game  as  well  as  he  could. 
He  is  important  to  us  because  he  was  much  more 
than  a  guerrillero,  because  he  was  an  organiser,  a 
general,  and  a  man  of  government.  It  took  him  a 
year  to  create  a  serious  force,  but  when  he  had 
achieved  the  feat  he  brought  to  the  siege  of  the  city  of 
Mexico  not  a  mere  overgrown  guerrilla,  but  an  army 
with  a  well-filled  and  well-managed  military  chest. 
If  we  look  only  at  the  marches  and  passages  of  fight 
we  shall  lose  sight  of  the  wood  because  of  the  multi- 
plicity of  the  trees.  Now  the  wood  which  really 
mattered  was  this — that  during  1866  Diaz  drew  the 
south  and  south-east  of  Mexico  into  his  own  hand, 
created  a  Government  and  a  treasury,  and  convinced 
friends  and  enemies  alike  that  he  was  a  man  with  aims 
far  above  the  mere  acquisition  of  booty,  and  faculties 
of  a  higher  order  than  are  needed  to  keep  a  band 
together  in  the  Sierra  and  use  it  to  worry  a  Government. 
A  single  incident  of  those  important  months  says 
much  to  explain  his  final  victory  over  all  other  forces 
at  work  in  the  hurly-burly  of  Mexican  war  and 
politics.  After  one  successful  skirmish  with  a  certain 
Visoso,  then  an  Imperialist,  but  later  on  a  repentant 
Republican,  he  captured  the  sum  of  $3,000.  Given, 
so  he  tells  us,  the  moral  character  of  some  of  the 
elements  he  had  to  work  with  (every  guerrilla  is  of 
necessity  a  Cave  of  Adullam),  it  followed  that  the 
$3,000  was  in  extreme  danger  of  being  divided  in  the 
true  brigand  or  piratical  way  at  the  capstan's  head. 
If  that  had  been  allowed  to  happen,  his  band  would 


94  DIAZ 

soon  have  been  no  better  than  so  many  others,  which 
differed  little,  or  not  at  all,  from  downright  brigands. 
But  it  was  not  allowed  to  happen.  The  $3,000  were 
collected  from  grasping  hands,  and  became  the  nest- 
egg  of  a  military  chest  from  which  Diaz  handed 
over  $300,000  to  the  empty  treasury  of  Juarez  when 
the  capital  was  occupied.  His  treasurer,  Manuel 
Guerrero,  never  lacked  funds  altogether.  How  he 
enforced  honesty  we  are  not  told  in  detail,  but  can 
guess  that  the  secret  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  com- 
manded because  he  was  he,  and  they  obeyed  because 
they  were  they.  In  the  last  resort  Diaz  could  when 
necessary  kill  his  man.  And  then  all  knew  that  he 
would  take  care  of  them. 

The  taking  care  could  go  to  great  lengths.  When 
nobody  else  was  available  Don  Poriirio  could  even 
tackle  a  surgical  operation  :  witness  the  case  of 
the  drum-major  Rodriguez.  The  poor  man  had 
received  a  wound  on  the  leg  which  made  amputation 
unavoidable.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  there 
was  no  surgeon  attached  to  the  guerrilla.  The  whole 
medical  corps,  such  as  it  was,  resided  in  the  person  of 
an  American  drummer  (in  the  sense  of  bagman)  who 
was  wandering  about  in  Mexico  to  sell  some  quack 
medicine.  When  he  was  asked  whether  he  would 
undertake  to  perform  the  operation  he  began  by 
answering  with  all  the  well-known  self-reliance  of  his 
class  and  nation  that  he  would.  The  only  instru- 
ments available  were  a  razor  and  a  carpenter's  saw. 
It  would  be  idle  indeed  to  suppose  that  there  were  any 
anaesthetics.  The  lack  of  these  last  was,  however, 
made  good  (as  it  was  in  the  Crimea)  by  the  adminis- 
tration of  a  very  strong  dose  of  raw  spirits.  When  the 
moment    came    to  fulfil    his  promise   the   American 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       95 

became  frightened  and  whispered  to  Diaz  his  con- 
fession that  he  dare  not  attempt  the  task  of  removing 
the  leg.  Then  the  general  did  what  was  necessary 
himself,  and  with  the  instruments  named.  He  says 
— and  nobody  will  doubt  his  word — that  when  the 
leg  had  been  amputated  he  went  away  with  the 
intimate  conviction  that  the  drum-major  must 
infallibly  die  very  shortly.  Yet  Rodriguez  survived 
for  many  years,  and  lived,  not  unhappily,  on  a  small 
pension — a  remarkable  instance  of  the  American 
Indian's  insensibility  to  pain  and  tenacity  of  life. 

The  most  promising  course  Don  Porfirio  could  take 
was  to  resume  his  command  as  general  of  the  Army 
of  the  East.  He  could  have  served  neither  his  cause 
nor  himself  by  joining  Juarez,  who  was  still  being 
hunted  from  pillar  to  post  in  the  northern  States. 
Nobody  had  been  named  to  succeed  him,  and  the 
field,  though  occupied  by  the  enemy,  was  clear  of 
rivals.  The  fact  that  the  Army  of  the  East  had  to  be 
made,  and  by  him,  without  help  from  the  fugitive 
Republican  Government  was  not  altogether  oppressing 
to  a  man  in  the  prime  of  life,  and  well  trained  in  the 
conditions  of  Spanish-American  civil  war.  He  might 
feel  reasonably  confident  of  his  capacity  to  do  what 
many  of  the  party  leaders  of  his  country  had  done 
before,  namely,  create  his  army  by  his  own  exertions. 
A  nucleus  had  gathered  about  him  quickly.  It 
consisted  mainly  of  Republican  ofiicers  who  had  been 
left  without  soldiers  to  lead  through  the  recent 
disasters  of  their  cause.  We  need  not  deny  them  the 
credit  of  having  acted  from  conviction,  but  it  is  also 
true  that  they  had  not  much  choice.  The  native 
forces  raised  by  Maximilian  did  not  offer  tempting 
chances  of  service.     The  Emperor  had  little  money, 


96  DIAZ 

and  his  troops  were  but  poorly  provided  for.  What 
resources  he  could  command  were  devoted  first  of  all 
to  the  Austrian  and  Belgian  bands  imported  to  stiffen 
his  Mexican  levies,  and  then  to  the  French  officers 
who  entered  his  service  as  instructors  of  native 
soldiers.  These  men,  who  brought  with  them  senti- 
ments of  dignity  and  self-respect  formed  in  a  great 
European  army,  were  apt  to  treat  the  Mexican 
Imperialist  officers  with  scant  regard.  Patriotic 
loyalty  and  political  convictions  were  strengthened  for 
the  Mexicans  who  followed  Diaz  by  resentment  for 
what  they  not  unnaturally  considered  mere  insolence. 
So  they  fought  as  "  reformados,"  to  use  a  military 
term  of  Spanish  origin  once  familiar  to  all  Europe — 
that  is  to  say,  they  did  duty  as  soldiers  because  their 
corps  were  disbanded  or  broken  up,  and  until  fortune 
should  give  them  a  chance  to  resume  their  position. 

The  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  as  yet  non-existent 
Army  of  the  East  would  have  preferred  to  begin  in 
his  native  Oaxaca,  but  he  was  headed  off  by  the 
French  Colonel  Hon  and  the  Imperialist  guerrillero 
Visoso.  There  being  no  opening  on  that  side,  he 
made  for  Guerrero.  This  province  was  one  of  several 
parts  of  Mexico  never  occupied  effectually  either  by 
the  French  army  or  the  Imperial  officers.  As  far  as 
it  was  governed  at  all,  it  obeyed  the  former  hero  of 
Ayutla,  who  was  in  fact  its  cacique  and  ruled  from 
his  ranch  at  La  Providencia.^ 

Alvarez  supplied  the  refugees  with  arms — at  least 
with  a  few,  some  of  which  are  reported  to  have  been 

^  Our  ranch  is  known  to  all  men  to  be  the  Spanish  rancho,  but  the  original 
is  not  generally  used  in  the  sense  we  give  it.  In  Old  Spain  rancho  means  a 
soldier's  rations.  In  most  parts  of  Spanish  America  the  name  is  given  to  a 
small  holding  occupied  by  a  head  herdsman  in  the  employment  of  a  big  cattle 
station,  i.e.,  an  **  estancia." 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       97 

flint-locks.  General  Leyva,  Colonels  Cano,  Segura, 
and  others,  joined  Diaz  in  La  Providencia  and  put 
themselves  under  his  orders.  His  operations  grew 
more  bold  as  he  gathered  strength,  which  he  did  in 
pretty  exact  proportion  to  the  increasing  favourable- 
ness of  the  circumstances  during  1866.  The  good 
peace-loving  people  of  Oaxaca  had  discovered  within 
a  few  months,  or  even  weeks,  that  when  they  helped 
Bazaine  to  rid  them  of  the  Republican  authorities 
they  did  not  also  free  themselves  from  tax  collectors 
and  forced  contributions  levied  by  the  Emperor's 
Government,  which  had  urgent  need  to  improve  its 
revenue,  nor  yet  from  the  exactions  of  the  patriot 
guerrilleros.  They  had  in  fact  cause  to  regret  the 
administration  of  Diaz,  who,  by  the  confession  of  his 
enemies,  always  made  a  moderate  use  of  his  power. 
And  then  it  soon  became  a  matter  of  common  know- 
ledge that  the  days  of  the  French  occupation  were 
numbered.  The  Government  of  the  United  States 
offered  a  steady  resistance  to  clamour  for  strong 
measures.  It  would  have  done  a  popular  thing  if  it 
had  sent  an  army  into  Mexico.  There  was  a  time 
when  Bazaine  felt  called  upon  to  take  measures  to 
concentrate  his  army  in  view  of  the  possibility  that 
General  Sheridan  would  cross  the  Rio  Grande  at  the 
head  of  200,000  Federal  troops.  But  concentration 
meant  evacuation  of  aU  the  outlying  provinces  north 
and  south.  In  the  meantime  arms,  money,  and 
volunteers  began  to  cross  the  frontier  to  support 
Juarez.  As  the  French  drew  together  Republican 
armies  began  to  spring  for  the  soil.  The  Republicans 
who  had  never  reconciled  themselves  to  the  intruding 
Empire  came  out  of  hiding  or  descended  from  the 
Sierras  to  be  organised  into  regular  armies.     All  that 


98  DIAZ 

element  of  prudent  people  who  when  the  broom  is  to  be 
used  prefer  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  handle  began  to  see 
that  it  was  much  safer  to  join  Juarez  than  to  sit  quiet 
and  still  more  so  than  to  help  the  Emperor.  The  agony 
of  Maximilian  and  his  poor  wife  was  beginning. 

The  southern  provinces  were  less  accessible  to 
American  help  than  the  northern.  But  very  soon  the 
French  posts  on  the  coast  and  their  squadrons  in  the 
Pacific  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  had  to  be  withdrawn. 
Then  help  from  the  States  came  to  Diaz  also.  His 
advance  was  not  continuously  successful.  Though 
he  had  not  to  deal  with  regular  French  troops,  but 
only  with  Maximilian's  Austrians^  and  Mexicans,  he 
was  for  some  time  held  in  check  and  once  badly 
beaten.  But  his  scattered  band  soon  rallied,  and 
went  on  growing  in  force.  He  fixed  his  headquarters 
at  Tlapa,  and  from  thence  made  his  excursions  either 
to  beat  up  the  enemy's  quarters,  or  para  arbitrarse 
algunos  recursos — that  is  to  say,  to  levy  money  and 
men  among  the  Mixteca  and  other  Indian  tribes. 

By  autumn  he  had  made  himself  master  of  the  open 
country,  and  had  reduced  the  Imperialist  garrison  of 
Oaxaca  to  a  state  of  blockade.  The  Government  at 
Mexico,  sinking  into  ever-increasing  difficulties,  could 
do  but  little  to  help  General  Oronoz,  the  Mexican  sup- 
porter who  held  the  town.  At  the  close  of  September 
Diaz  overpowered  a  small  body  of  ''Hungarian" 
cavalry  at  Nochistlan.  He  frankly  allows  that  they 
were  only  a  few,  but  points  out  that  their  undeniable 
superiority  in  discipline  was  an  appreciable  set-off  to 

^  Diaz  himself  speaks  of  his  European  opponents  as  Hungarians,  but  I  do 
not  feel  sure  that  he  used  the  name  only  to  designate  the  nationality  of  the 
foreigners.  "  Ungaro  "  is  a  Hungarian  no  doubt,  but  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
most  familiar  to  Spanish-speaking  peoples  is  gipsy,  or  even  only  vagrant, 
tinker.  The  first  gipsies  who  followed  that  trade  in  Spain  said,  probably 
with  truth,  that  they  came  from  Hungary. 


THE  RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK       99 

their  numerical  weakness.  This  stroke  exasperated 
Oronoz,  and  he  sallied  from  the  town  with  some  2,000 
men,  resolved  to  scatter  the  Republican  guerrilleros. 
Oronoz  may  have  been  zealous  for  his  cause,  but  he 
was  not  quick-witted  enough  to  handle  his  opponent. 
He  allowed  Diaz  to  lead  him  into  a  trap  of  the  most 
simple  if  also  of  the  most  effective  kind.  The 
Imperialist  officer  advanced,  apparently  without 
taking  the  least  precaution  to  reconnoitre,  along  a 
road  running  through  the  Indian  town  or  big  village 
Miahuatlan,  at  the  foot  of  the  Sierra  de  Cuixtla. 
Diaz,  who  did  keep  a  sharp  look-out,  laid  an  ambush 
for  him.  He  posted  a  part  of  his  mounted  men  in 
front  of  the  village  to  meet  Oronoz  and  draw  him  on. 
The  bulk  of  his  force  was  disposed  to  the  rear  of  the 
village,  concealed  in  "  waves  of  the  ground."  The 
function  of  the  cavalry  in  front  of  Miahuatlan  was 
to  run  away  through  the  village  and  draw  the  Im- 
perialists into  an  over-confident  pursuit  which  would 
carry  them  headlong  into  the  middle  of  the  ambush 
in  the  rear.  Oronoz  fell  into  the  trap,  came  helter- 
skelter  through  the  village,  and  was  fired  into  from 
both  sides.  His  force  was  brought  to  a  sharp  stop. 
The  reaction  from  over-confidence  to  panic  is  in- 
evitable with  ill-trained  troops,  and  the  Imperialists 
began  to  turn  back.  Then  Diaz  charged  and  drove 
them  in  rout  before  him.  The  official,  or  patriotic, 
historian  of  this  war,  Senor  Escudero,  talks  of  the 
"  delirium  of  battle  "  in  Miahuatlan.  Yet  it  seems  that 
the  total  loss  of  the  Imperialists  was  only  eighty  in  a 
force  of  well  over  2,000.  As  for  the  killed,  the 
majority  were,  as  was  the  custom  in  Mexican  conflicts, 
shot  after  the  battle.  We  have  the  authority  of  Don 
Porfirio  for  the  fact  that  twenty-two  Mexican  officers 


100  DIAZ 

whom  he  captured  were  shot.  He  spared  the  lives  of 
some  French  officers  whom  he  took.  He  was  nowise 
given  to  the  Munchausen  style.  He  never  indulges 
in  talk  about  deliriums  of  battle  and  so  forth.  There 
is  a  tone  of  sobriety  and  an  obvious  desire  to  tell  the 
truth  in  his  reminiscences  which  inspires  confidence. 
He  records  a  detail  which  a  writer  more  concerned  to 
give  an  heroic  turn  to  the  story  would  have  omitted. 
He  says  that  the  villagers  of  Miahuatlan,  who  were 
"  very  daring  and  were  Jrw«^,"i  fired  into  the  flanks  of 
the  Imperialists  and  did  good  service  by  capturing 
hack  and  led  horses.  The  loss  of  these  latter  was 
disastrous  for  the  officers  of  Oronoz's  ill-led  column. 
The  victory  at  Miahuatlan,  which  was  won  October  3, 
1866,  had  a  considerable  moral  effect.  It  was  indeed 
a  mere  guerrillero  action  such  as  had  been  fought 
by  the  hundred  on  Mexican  soil  without  producing 
any  consequences  worth  noting.  But  it  was  of 
immense  importance  in  relation  to  surrounding 
conditions.  The  Republican  arrows  were  now  flying 
with  the  wind,  and  all  the  world  could  see  that  unless 
help  came  the  next  step  would  be  the  occupation  of 
the  city  and  the  total  ruin  of  the  Imperial  cause  in  the 
south  and  east.  Hard  pressed  as  Maximilian's  Govern- 
ment was,  it  could  not  allow  such  a  disaster  to  happen 
without  making  some  attempt  to  support  its  officers. 
A  column  of  1,500  of  its  foreign  soldiers,  on  whom  it 
could  rely  more  than  on  its  Mexicans,  was  sent  to 
relieve  Oronoz.  A  few  days  after  his  victory  and  the 
retreat  of  his  opponent  on  Oaxaca  Diaz  intercepted  a 
despatch  from  Mexico  to  Oronoz  informing  him  that 
the  relief  was  on  its  way.     He  was  then  blockading 

^  Estahan  ebrios,  he  says  ;  and  he  adds  nothing  to  indicate  that  they  were 
ebrios  with  patriotic  emotion  or  indeed  with  anything  but  aguardiente  or 
pulque. 


THE   RISE  TO  THE  FIRST  RANK      loi 

the  town  closely  with  the  force  he  had  organised  and 
had  now  brought  to  fair  order,  and  with  the  cavalry 
guerrillas  commanded  by  his  brother  Felix.  He  was 
in  some  danger  of  finding  himself  between  two  fires. 
There  were  three  ways  in  which  he  could  guard  against 
the  misfortune.  He  could  try  to  storm  the  town  before 
the  relieving  force  could  come  up,  or  he  could  turn  on 
that  force  itself,  or  he  could  raise  the  blockade.  The 
third  course  he  was  resolved  not  to  take,  and  he  did 
not  think  his  force  equal  to  taking  the  first.  So  he 
adopted  the  second,  and  carried  it  out  with  military 
decision  aided  by  a  pleasing  admixture  of  guerrillero 
graft. 

The  Republicans  had  already  secured  a  footing  in 
the  lower  quarters  of  the  town,  though  they  had  made 
no  impression  on  the  barricaded,  loopholed,  and  mined 
upper  part  of  it.  Diaz  knew  that  his  opponent  had 
ways  of  learning  what  was  going  on  in  his  camp.  He 
had  observed  in  the  course  of  his  studies  of  human 
nature  that  if  a  man  wishes  his  secrets  to  be  soon 
proclaimed  from  the  housetops  he  can  take  no  more 
effectual  course  than  to  confide  them  in  strict  confi- 
dence to  well-selected  friends.  Therefore  he  informed 
such  chosen  persons  as  he  knew  would  not  fail  to  blab 
that  he  meant  to  assault  the  upper  town  on  the  very 
next  night.  As  he  foresaw,  Oronoz  was  duly  warned, 
and  stood  to  arms  prepared  to  account  for  any  move- 
ment he  might  hear  in  the  lines  of  the  blockaders  as 
being  the  preliminary  of  an  intended  surprise.  Then, 
while  the  Imperialist  waited  for  the  attack  which 
never  came,  Diaz  marched  swiftly  and  in  the  dark  to 
occupy  the  point  at  which  he  intended  to  intercept 
the  relieving  column.  When  at  daybreak  the 
Republican  position  was  seen  to  be  empty,  Oronoz 


102  DIAZ 

was  puzzled.  He  suspected  a  trap  and  could  not 
guess  what  it  was.  The  despatch  which  might  have 
enlightened  him  had,  as  we  have  seen,  been  inter- 
cepted. After  hesitating  and  delaying  long  enough  to 
allow  Diaz  to  lay  his  ambush  for  the  coming  column, 
Oronoz  did  come  out.  But  his  shrewd  opponent 
played  for  his  head.  After  posting  his  infantry  and 
guns  he  came  back  with  his  cavalry  to  a  farm  on  the 
road.  The  mayordomo,  or  bailiff,  in  charge  was,  as 
he  well  knew,  a  strong  Clerical  partisan.  So  he  made 
ostentatious  preparations  to  ambush  Oronoz  in  sight 
of  this  man,  who  was  not  put  under  arrest  nor  watched. 
Of  course,  he  ran  off  with  his  valuable  information. 
The  Imperialist  officer,  who  had  the  fear  of  Diaz  in  his 
bones  since  Miahuatlan,  fell  into  the  trap  and  went  in 
haste  back  to  Oaxaca. 

Don  Porfirio  had  decided  to  wait  for  the  relieving 
column  in  a  place  which  was  to  have  a  personal  interest 
for  him — La  Carbonera.  He  had  instructed  his 
subordinate,  General  Figueroa,  to  join  at  that  spot 
with  certain  Indians  of  the  Mixteca  hills  who  had 
"  risen  at  the  call  of  patriotism."  The  call  had  of 
course  been  sounded  by  the  voice  and  in  the  tones 
which  usually  summoned  an  "  Indiada." 

La  Carbonera  is  a  small  plateau  on  the  road  to 
Oaxaca  from  the  north.  It  is  divided  into  a  larger 
and  higher  and  a  smaller  and  lower  portion  by  a 
"  cuenca,"  a  shell  or  dip,  through  which  the  road  runs. 
It  was  wooded,  and  on  the  lower  portion  the  bush  was 
thick.  This  was  the  part  of  the  ground  where  the 
infantry  were  stationed  by  Diaz.  Colonel  Hotze,  the 
Austrian  who  commanded  the  relieving  force,  showed 
no  more  judgment  than  Oronoz.  He  marched  till  he 
was  brought  up  by  the  Mexicans  on  the  lower  ground. 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK      103 

Then  Diaz,  who  disposed  of  the  greater  numbers, 
turned  his  flank  through  the  wood  on  the  higher 
ground  and  beat  him  utterly. 

The  well-managed  affair  at  La  Carbonera  completed 
the  ruin  of  the  Imperial  cause  in  Oaxaca.     Diaz  had 
marched  on  October  16  and  had  won  his  fight  on  the 
1 8th.     On  the   30th  the   town  was  surrendered  by 
Oronoz.     The   interval   had   been   largely   spent   in 
negotiations.     One  of  the  negotiators  was  the  bishop 
Dr.    Covarrubias,    whose    aim    was    to    provide    for 
himself.     He  sent  to  ask  the  Republican  general  what 
treatment  he  had  to  expect.     Don  Porfirio,  speaking 
daggers  that  he  might  frighten  his  man  away  and  so 
be  spared  the  necessity  to  use  them,  replied  that  it  was 
his  intention  to  shoot  the  bishop  in  "  full  uniform." 
Dr.  Covarrubias  did  not  think  proper  to  embarrass 
him  by  giving  him  a  chance  of  fulfiUing  his  threat,  but 
fled  hastily  to  Mexico  along  the  line  of  escape  carefully 
left  open  for  him.     Yet,  as  after  Miahuatlan,  Diaz 
showed  no  squeamishness  in  ordering  military  execu- 
tions of  traitors.     Pablo  Franco,  the  Imperial  Prefect 
of  Oaxaca,  who  endeavoured  to  escape  at  the  same 
time  as  the  bishop,  was  taken  (probably  because  he 
was  more  sharply  looked  after)  and  condemned  to  be 
shot.     He  appealed  for  mercy  in  vain.     He  had  indeed 
done  a  thing  which  made  it  difficult  to  pardon  him. 
A  known  Republican  of  Oaxaca,  Justo  Rodriguez  by 
name,  had  been  shot  by  his  orders.     Justo's  brother, 
who  was  a  portrait  painter,  had  made  a  likeness  of 
his    body   after  execution.     Diaz  hesitated,    or   was 
thought  to  hesitate,  as  to  whether  he  would  allow  the 
execution.     The  painter  sent  the  portrait  to  him  with 
a  statement  of  the  facts,  and  Franco  was  left  to  his 
fate.     The  story  stands  in  the  official  biography  of 


104  JDIAZ 

the  President  published  so  late  as  1909,  and  with  his 
approval,  by  Dr.  Fortunato  Hernandez,  "  Un  Pueblo, 
un  Siglo  y  un  Hombre."  It  is  allowed  that  Diaz  was, 
as  compared  with  other  Mexican  leaders,  humane. 
Yet  we  see  from  this  episode,  and  from  the  slaying  of 
the  Mexican  officers  taken  at  Miahuatlan,  that  he  was 
not  wholly  untouched  by  the  element  of  pure  savagery 
in  which  he  was  born  and  grew  up.  In  his  later  days, 
when  he  had  become  the  pet  of  American  and  Euro- 
pean capitalists  and  "  edifying  letters  "  were  written 
about  him  by  persons  who  had  received  favours  from 
him  and  hoped  to  receive  others,  details  of  this  kind 
were  suppressed.  Yet  he  had  no  wish  to  hide  them 
himself.  He  was  no  more  inclined  than  Cromwell  to 
be  beautified,  at  any  rate  not  by  himself,  and  it  is  most 
probable  that  he  saw  nothing  to  conceal.  He  was  a 
governing  man,  but  he  was  a  Mexican.  Full  of  blood 
and  battles  was  his  youth,  and  full  of  blood  and  battles 
was  his  age,  and  in  his  country  it  was  not  given  him 
ever  to  leave  that  life  of  blood. 

The  fall  of  Oaxaca  was  soon  followed  by  the  surrender 
of  Tehuantepec,  the  last  Imperialist  post  in  the 
south.  Diaz  now  received  substantial  help  from  the 
United  States  in  the  form,  not  of  money,  but  of  arms. 
Money  he  could  get  by  raising  contributions,  but  it 
would  have  done  him  no  good  if  he  had  had  to  spend  it 
in  acquiring  arms.  The  south  being  now  reconquered 
for  the  Republican  cause,  he  could  prepare  to  bring 
help  to  his  party  in  the  centre.  The  French  troops 
were  being  concentrated  on  the  line  from  Mexico  city 
to  Veracruz,  getting  ready  to  take  ship  for  Europe. 
Napoleon  III.  was  naturally  much  concerned  to  pro- 
vide against  the  risk  that  the  evacuation  should  be 
disgraced  by  some  untoward  incident.     Bazaine  was 


THE  RISE  TO  THE  FIRST  RANK      105 

no  less  desirous  to  come  off  with  a  good  grace.  The 
atmosphere  was  favourable  to  intrigue,  and  a  letter 
which  Diaz  wrote  at  the  time  to  Don  Matias  Romero 
records  that  he  was  asked  to  take  part  in  one  of  a 
truly  extraordinary  character.  Romero  was  Mexican 
Minister  at  Washington.  The  Republican  officers  in 
the  south  were  cut  off  from  Juarez,  who  was  in  the 
northern  provinces,  and  were  compelled  to  communi- 
cate with  him  through  the  United  States.  So  it  was  to 
the  Minister,  and  not  to  the  President,  that  Diaz  made 
this  surprising  statement :  "  General  Bazaine,  through 
a  third  party,  offered  to  surrender  to  me  the  cities  which 
they  [i.e.,  the  French]  occupied,  also  to  deliver  Maxi- 
milian, Marquez,  Miramon,  etc.,  into  my  hands,  pro- 
vided I  would  accede  to  a  proposal  which  he  made  me, 
and  which  I  rejected,  as  I  deemed  it  not  very  honour- 
able. Another  proposition  was  also  made  me  by 
authority  of  Bazaine,  for  the  purchase  of  six  thousand 
muskets  and  four  million  percussion  caps,  and  if  I  had 
desired  it,  he  would  have  sold  me  both  guns  and 
powder."  ^ 

The  witness  for  the  fact  that  Bazaine  made  these 
proposals  is  manifestly  the  third  party  who  reported 
them  to  Diaz.  Twenty  years  after  the  letter  to  Romero 
was  written  (in  1886)  it  came  to  the  knowledge  of 
Bazaine,  who  was  then  living  in  great  misery  at 
Madrid.  It  provoked  him  to  write  an  angry  expostu- 
lation to  Don  Porfirio,  who  at  that  later  date  had  been 
well  established  for  some  time  as  President  of  Mexico. 
The  unhappy  exile  recriminated  by  a  counter-charge 
that  Diaz  had  written  a  compromising  letter  to  him  in 
1865,  and  asked  very  reasonably  for  the  name  of  the 
alleged   agent.     Don    Porfirio's   answer   is   explicit : 

1  Mrs.  Tweedie's  "Porfirio  Diaz,"  p.  169. 


io6  DIAZ 

"  With  regard  to  the  second  point,  although  some  years 
have  now  passed,  I  do  not  think  that  you  will  have 
forgotten  Senor  Carlos  Thiele.     I  must  tell  you,  since 
you  ask  me,  that  he  was  the  person  whom  I  sent  to  you 
to  arrange  the  exchange  of  Mexican  prisoners  who 
were  in  your  power  for  those  taken  by  me  in  the  actions 
of  Nochistlan,  Miahuatlan,  La  Carbonera,Tehuantepec 
and  Oaxaca,  an  exchange  which  was  made  with  great 
advantage  to  the  French  army,  because  I  sent  as  a 
favour  all  the  chiefs,  officers  and  soldiers  that  were 
left  with  me  when  you  had  no  officers  of  ours  of  equal 
rank  to  exchange  for  them.     This  Senor  Thiele  it  was 
who,  in  your  name,  made  me  the  proposals  which  I 
reported  in  the  letter  which  has  aroused  your  resent- 
ment, and  who,  a  few  months  after  the  circumstances 
to  which  I  refer,  settled  in  Guatemala,  where  he  can 
still  be  found.     I  should  be  very  pleased  if  you  could 
some  day  persuade  me  that  the  whole  affair  was  an 
imposture  on  the  part  of  this  gentleman,  and  I  would 
make  it  known  to  the  public  who  read  my  letter  ;  but 
for  this  I  need  Senor  Thiele's  own  declaration,  as  the 
knowledge  that  I  have  Wi  him  does  not  justify  me  in 
doubting  his  honour." 

As  for  the  letter  of  1865,  Diaz  avows  that  he  could 
not  remember  its  terms,  but  was  sure  it  could  not  do 
him  any  harm,  for  he  could  not  call  to  mind  any  deed 
in  his  life  of  which  he  had  cause  to  be  ashamed.  And 
there  perhaps  we  may  as  well  leave  the  matter. 
That  Don  Carlos  Thiele,  when  he  had  been  hunted  up 
in  his  retreat  in  Guatemala,  would  have  confessed  that 
he  was  guilty  of  a  mere  imposture  seems  improbable 
in  the  last  degree.  But  then  it  is  no  less  incredible 
that  a  marshal  of  France  who  had  a  great  career  before 
him  at  home  should  have  offered  to  kidnap  Maximilian, 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK      107 

Marquez,  Miramon,  etc.,  and  hand  them  over  to  the 
Mexican  general  of  the  Army  of  the  East.  What 
price  could  Mexico  pay  to  compensate  him  for  social 
and  professional  ruin  and  dishonour  ?  Diaz  does  not 
tell  us  what  the  condition  was  that  Bazaine  was  said 
by  Don  Carlos  Thiele  to  have  made.  Until  we  have 
better  evidence  than  the  word  of  the  gentleman  now 
retired  to  Guatemala  to  go  on  it  is  useless  to  inquire. 
The  safest  course  is  to  dismiss  the  whole  as  a  story  of 
a  cock  and  a  bull.  It  is  true  enough  that  some  super- 
fluous arms  which  Bazaine  disposed  of  before  he  left 
Mexico  did  come  into  the  hands  of  the  Republicans. 
But  then  the  Mexicans  who  were  armed  by  Maximilian 
were  always  going  over  with  arms  and  baggage  to  the 
enemy.  So  did  the  Spaniards  who  were  recruited  by 
Joseph  Bonaparte  in  the  Peninsular  War.  Diaz  says 
he  got  them  by  ordering  the  villagers  to  bring  in 
whatever  arms  they  had.  He  no  doubt  told  the  truth. 
We  need,  however,  have  no  hesitation  in  believing 
that  MaximiHan  tried  to  induce  Don  Porfirio  to  join 
him  and  sent  a  certain  M.  Burnouf  to  give  him  the 
invitation.  The  poor  Empeifcr  was  desperate  at  the 
close  of  1866,  and  was  in  a  mood  to  try  to  make  arrows 
of  all  wood.  It  was  a  matter  of  course  that  the  offer 
should  be  refused.  Even  if  we  put  all  considerations 
of  honour  and  principle  aside  (which,  obviously,  we 
have  no  right  to  do),  common  sense  would  have 
taught  Diaz  to  keep  aloof  from  an  adventure  which 
was  visibly  on  the  brink  of  ruin.  Even  when  he  was 
a  prisoner  at  Puebla  and  the  Republican  cause  was  at 
its  lowest  ebb,  he  had  steadily  refused  even  to  see 
Maximilian. 

All  this  conflict  of  insinuations  and  assertions  serves 
merely  as  a  reminder  that  the  French  intervention 


io8  DIAZ 

ended  as  it  began,  amid  intrigues  and  delusions.  The 
Mexicans  never  dared  to  make  an  attack  on  the 
retreating  French  troops.  Bazaine  shipped  the  last 
detachment  of  his  soldiers  and  sailed  away  with  them 
in  the  early  days  of  February,  1867.  Maximilian, 
after  a  short  crisis  of  hesitation,  did  the  one  thing 
which  could  save  his  honour.  He  had  committed 
himself  to  folly,  and  all  that  remained  for  him  to  do 
was  to  stay  and  die.  His  enemies  closed  on  him  from 
north  and  south.  On  March  9  Diaz,  having  now 
thoroughly  organised  his  Army  of  the  East,  began  the 
siege  of  Puebla.  His  attack  followed  the  same  line  as 
Forey's — from  the  east  and  from  house  to  house  and 
barricade  to  barricade.  The  defence  of  the  Imperialists 
was  for  a  time  at  least  resolute.  Diaz  was  once  in 
no  small  danger  from  the  fall  of  the  blazing  roof  of  a 
house  while  he  was  directing  the  attack  in  person. 
He  had  the  misfortune  to  be  rather  severely  burnt. 
Yet  the  way  in  which  the  town  fell  on  April  2  shows, 
to  say  no  more  of  it,  that  the  defence  was  far  less 
resolute  than  Ortega's  had  been  in  1863.  What  was 
said  is  that  the  place  was  betrayed  for  money,  but  one 
has  to  allow  that  this  is  just  what  would  be  said. 

The  fall  of  Puebla  would  be  a  final  blow  to  the  ^ 
Imperialist  cause,  for  when  the  city  was  in  possession  \ 
of  the  Republicans  all  communications  between 
Mexico  and  Veracruz  were  cut.  Some  effort  must 
unquestionably  be  tried  to  save  it.  The  attempt  was 
made  by  Marquez,  the  Tiger  of  Tacubaya,  who  was  now 
in  command  at  Mexico.  If  there  was  any  man  from 
whom  the  most  determined  exertions  in  the  Imperial 
cause  were  to  be  expected  he  was  this  blood-stained 
partisan.  There  was  that  between  him  and  the 
Republicans  which  seemed  to  make  it  for  ever  impos- 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK     109 

sible  that  there  could  be  any  question  of  quarter  for 
him.  Yet  the  Prince  of  Salm  Salm,  who  was  serving 
Maximilian  and  was  actually  present  with  Marquez's 
command,  believed  that  he  played  false.  He  left 
Mexico  with  a  force  which  could,  if  vigorously  used, 
have  raised  the  siege  of  Puebla.  It  included  some 
Austrian  troops  of  far  better  quality  than  the  Mexican 
levies,  though  weak  in  numbers.  But  he  dawdled  on 
the  road,  and  while  he  delayed  Diaz  stormed  the  town. 
If  the  element  of  treason  was  absent  (and  all  our 
witnesses,  native  or  foreign,  are  far  from  the  truth  if 
it  was  often  unknown  in  Mexican  conflicts),  then  Don 
Porfirio  acted  as  did  the  Duke  of  Wellington  when  he 
knew  that  Marmont  was  on  the  way  to  relieve  Ciudad 
Rodrigo.  "  Ciud  M  Rodrigo  must  be  taken  to-night," 
was  the  famous  order,  and  taken  it  was.  Even  if  there 
was  treason,  Diaz  was  entitled  to  take  advantage  of 
the  baseness  of  his  opponents,  however  much  he  might 
despise  them.  "  La  traicion  place,  pero  no  el  que  lo 
hace "  ("  The  treason  is  acceptable,  but  not  the 
traitor  "),  is  another  Spanish  proverb,  and  military 
casuistry  has  always  allowed  of  the  corruption  of 
the  enemy's  officers.  Be  the  truth  as  it  may,  Puebla 
was  taken,  and  not  without  some  fighting. 

And  now  the  next  step  was  the  pursuit  of  Marquez. 
On  April  5,  on  the  third  day  after  he  had  occupied  the 
town,  Diaz  marched  to  overtake  the  "  Tiger."  He 
was  unable  to  start  sooner  because  two  or  three  of  the 
outlying  forts  continued  to  resist.  The  way  of 
surrender  was  made  smooth,  and  on  this  occasion 
there  was  no  butchery  of  prisoners.  Don  Porfirio 
found  and  availed  himself  of  an  opportunity  to  prove 
that  he  did  not  nurse  a  grudge.  When  he  escaped 
from    Puebla    in    September    a    certain    Imperialist 


no  DIAZ 

official,  one  Escamillo,  had  made  a  great  display  of 
zeal  by  offering  a  reward  for  the  capture  of  the 
prisoner.  He  had  talked  of  shooting.  He  was  now  in 
Don  Porfirio's  power,  and  was  reasonably  nervous  till 
he  was  relieved  by  the  good-humoured,  if  rather  scorn- 
ful, words,  "  It  was  lucky  for  me  I  was  not  caught." 

The  pursuit  of  Marquez  was  pushed  with  energy. 
On  April  6  Diaz,  who  had  left  his  infantry  and  guns 
to  follow  and  had  led  the  pursuit  with  his  cavalry, 
came  upon  the  enemy  at  San  Diego  Notario.  Marquez 
made  no  serious  attempt  to  stand,  and  he  left  the 
Austrian  or  Hungarian  and  Polish  horsemen,  com- 
manded by  Kodolich,  Wickenburg,  and  Khevenhiiller, 
to  cover  his  retreat.  A  clash  followed  which  has,  as 
is  not  unusual  in  all  accounts  of  wars,  been  diversely 
reported.  The  Mexican  version — that  is  to  say,  Don 
Porfirio's — is  that  the  Europeans  were  beaten  in  and 
the  whole  body  of  the  Imperialists  forced  into  a  run. 
Prince  Salm  Salm  has  it  that  the  Mexicans  were 
beaten  off  and  the  retreat  of  the  Imperialists  covered. 
Marquez  marched  hurriedly  for  Guadalupe  Hidalgo, 
to  the  north  of  Mexico,  taking  a  curve  to  reach  his 
refuge.  Diaz  hoped  to  cut  his  road  at  Paso  de 
Tortolitas.  He  had  directed  another  Republican 
officer  to  occupy  the  pass.  This  officer,  Jesus 
Lalanne,  did  make  the  attempt,  and  was  severely 
cut  up.  But  he  delayed  Marquez  till  Diaz  could  bring 
his  infantry  and  guns  into  action.  Finally  the 
"  Tiger  "  got  away  with  the  majority  of  his  men  by 
sacrificing  his  guns  and  baggage  and  going  off  across 
country  in  the  regular  scattered  guerrilla  style. 
The  Europeans  in  his  army  suffered  severely  ;  but  he 
and  his  Mexicans  did  not  shine  as  fighters. 

The  ensuing  blockade  and  occupation  of  the  city  of 


THE  RISE   TO   THE  FIRST  RANK      iii 

Mexico  formed  the  honourable  close  to  the  services  of 
Porfirio  Diaz  in  this  war.  The  capitulation  of  the 
city  on  June  20,  the  day  after  the  execution  of 
Maximilian  at  Queretaro,  was  indeed  the  penultimate 
date  of  the  struggle.  The  actual  last  was  the  capitu- 
lation of  the  Imperialist  garrison  of  Veracruz  on  the 
28th  of  the  same  month.  It  was  the  good  fortune  of 
the  future  President  of  Mexico  that  he  ended  this 
period  of  his  life  in  circumstances  which  made  it 
possible  for  him  to  combine  perfect  loyalty  to  his 
cause  with  the  utmost  moderation.  He  had  no 
direct  connection  with  the  tragedy  at  Queretaro,  for 
tragedy  it  was  in  more  than  the  loose  sense  of  the  word. 
It  has  been  much  the  custom  of  historians  to  draw  a 
distinction  between  the  humanity  of  General  Diaz 
and  the  Indian  ferocity  of  Juarez.  A  biographer  is 
bound  in  honour  to  say  the  best  he  can  for  his  hero, 
and  there  has  been  and  will  be  much  good  to  say  of 
Porfirio  Diaz.  But  the  loyalty  of  a  biographer  is  one 
thing  and  the  lues  Boswelliana  is  another.  It  was 
possible,  and  even  easy,  to  show  humanity  at  Mexico. 
It  was  not  so  easy,  and  it  was  even  not  possible,  at 
Queretaro.  Can  anybody  give  a  rational  reason  why 
the  Archduke  Maximilian  should  not  have  shared  the 
fate  of  the  Count  of  Raousset  Boulbon  ?  To  say  that 
he  was  a  gentleman  of  illustrious  birth  and  that  he 
ought  not  to  have  been  treated  like  a  vulgar  filibuster 
is  not  to  give  a  rational  reason,  but  to  make  an 
exhibition  of  flunkeyism.  And  apart  from  that  con- 
temptible sentiment,  what  is  there  to  say  of  the  un- 
happy Archduke  ?  Napoleon  III.  was  in  1862  the 
ruler  of  a  sovereign  State,  and  he  may  be  said  to  have 
had  a  right  to  pursue  any  line  of  policy  he  chose, 
however   unwise.     His   officers   and  soldiers  obeyed 


112  DIAZ 

their  master  as  they  were  bound  by  military  honour 
and  all  law  to  do.  But  Maximilian  was  no  officer  of 
Napoleon's.  He  was,  with  all  his  great  pedigree, 
simply  an  adventurer  who  came  to  fight  for  a  throne, 
for  he  had  no  sort  of  evidence  that  the  Mexicans  would 
accept  him.  When  he  consented  to  sign  the  notorious 
decree  by  which  he  refused  quarter  to  the  Republican 
officers  who  fell  into  his  hands  he  put  himself  on  a 
level  with  the  very  worst  of  the  people  he  was  pro- 
fessing to  regenerate.  If  he  had  won  he  would  have 
enjoyed  his  victory  in  wealth  and  power.  It  was  the 
least  he  could  do  to  stake  his  life,  and  when  he  lost 
to  pay  the  forfeit.  He  did  so  quietly  and  manfully, 
and  that  was  best  for  him.  Juarez  had  a  hard  part  to 
play,  but  he  did  his  duty.  If  he  had  done  less  he 
would  only  have  encouraged  other  younger  sons  of 
royal  houses  to  seek  their  fortunes  in  the  disorders 
of  Spanish-American  republics  sword  in  hand.  We 
need  not  think  that  no  element  of  revenge  entered  into 
his  decision.  After  all  he  was  a  Mexican-Indian. 
But  we  have  no  right  to  affirm  that  revenge  was  his 
main  motive.  What  Diaz  would  have  done  in  his 
place  must  remain  a  mere  matter  of  conjecture,  but 
he  never  explicitly  condemned  the  President's  action. 
As  it  was,  he  had  only  to  wait  and  watch  till  the 
city  capitulated.  It  is  highly  probable  that  he  might 
have  forced  his  way  in  if  he  had  chosen.  But  the 
surrender  was  certain  to  come,  and  he  was  anxious  to 
shed  no  blood  unnecessarily.  Hunger  would  do  the 
work  effectually,  and  the  brutality  of  Marquez  could 
only  serve  to  make  the  townsmen  long  the  more 
heartily  for  the  coming  of  the  day  of  his  overthrow. 
The  savage  was  indeed  desperate.  He  made  a  furious 
display  of  a  determination  to  hold  out  to  the  last, 


THE   RISE  TO  THE   FIRST  RANK      113 

but  the  main  measures  he  took  were  to  extort  money 
and  scatter  lies.  Whoever  refused  to  pay  the  forced 
loans  he  demanded  was  put  into  prison  and  allowed 
the  smallest  ration  which  would  support  life.  This 
kind  of  energy  was  quite  in  the  Mexican  tradition. 
Juarez  had  done  the  same  thing  ;  but  Mexicans  who 
had  money  to  lose,  and  the  foreign  men  of  business 
settled  among  them,  may  well  have  asked  themselves 
what  they  had  gained  from  the  grandiose  schemes  of 
Napoleon  III.  for  the  regeneration  of  Mexico.  One 
firm  was  robbed  of  $125,000  and  another  of  $100,000. 
Some  part  of  this  plunder — to  say  the  very  least  of  it 
— was  not  spent  on  the  defence  of  the  city,  but 
reserved  to  be  carried  off  when  the  time  should  come 
to  run  away.  Meanwhile  Marquez  and  the  Imperialist 
Press,  which  repeated  what  he  ordered  it  to  say,  kept 
assuring  the  townsmen  that  Maximilian  was  victorious 
in  the  north  and  would  soon  come  to  their  assistance. 
It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  on  May  6  he  did  get  a 
message  from  Maximilian  reporting  some  successes 
won  on  April  27,  but  nobody  knew  better  than 
Marquez  how  hollow  such  victories  must  needs  be. 
Though  the  forces  of  Diaz  were  as  yet  hardly  sufficient 
to  allow  him  to  beleaguer  the  city  closely,  he  was 
master  of  the  open  country,  and  could  cut  off  the 
supply  of  food.  Early  in  June  provisions  were 
running  short  and  the  inhabitants,  if  not  the  Im- 
perialist soldiers,  began  to  suffer  severely  from  hunger. 
The  one  passage  of  what  can  be  called  fighting  took 
place  on  May  12.  On  that  date  General  M.  Diaz  de  la 
Vega,  an  Imperialist  officer^  made  a  sortie  to  the  north, 
succeeded  in  forcing  the  blockading  force  back  for 
some  little  distance,  and  collecting  a  useful  quantity 
of  forage.     The  Prince  of  Salm  Salm  gives  the  whole 


114  DIAZ 

credit  for  the  operation  to  the  Austrians  in  the  garrison. 
The  Mexican  authorities  deny  that  any  Austrians 
took  part  in  it. 

On  May  i6  Diaz  found  means  to  let  the  town  know 
that  MaximiHan  had  been  taken  on  the  previous  day. 
He  had  the  news  by  telegraph.  Marquez  continued 
to  deny  and  to  threaten  to  shoot.  But  reinforcements 
began  to  reach  Diaz  from  the  north.  On  May  24  he 
was  joined  by  Ramon  Corona  with  15,000  men,  and 
by  his  brother  Felix  with  cavalry  from  the  south. 
Other  reinforcements  followed,  and  the  lines  were 
drawn  closer  round  the  city.  Marquez  continued  to 
deny  and  to  wrangle,  and  as  the  end  grew  nearer  his 
efforts  to  extort  money  became  more  savage.  On 
May  28  he  was  persuaded  or  forced  to  send  out  a  flag 
of  truce  to  verify  the  report  of  the  Emperor's  sur- 
render. Diaz  showed  the  officer  who  brought  it  the 
letter  which  Maximilian  had  sent  to  Baron  Magnus 
asking  him  to  come  with  a  counsel  to  assist  in  his 
defence.  Still  Marquez  would  not  give  in,  but 
declared  that  the  government  now  belonged  of  right 
to  a  regency.  The  fact  was  that  the  man  could  not 
surrender.  For  him  there  could  be  no  quarter.  His 
only  hope  was  to  break  out  after  laying  hands  on  as 
much  money  as  he  could  carry  and  escape  to  the  hills 
and  from  thence  to  the  United  States.  He  made  his 
last  effort  on  the  night  of  June  17-18  with  6,000  men, 
but  was  met  by  Diaz  and  driven  back  on  the  city. 
And  now  the  end  came  swiftly.  The  Austrians 
refused  to  fight.  They  had  been  told  by  the  Minister 
Baron  Lago  that  the  Emperor  had  written  from  his 
prison  telling  them  to  resist  no  longer,  and  that  the 
letter  must  have  been  intercepted  by  Marquez.  They 
withdrew  into  their  barrack  and  stood  on  their  guard. 


THE   RISE  TO  THE  FIRST  RANK      115 

The  conduct  of  these  heroes  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  calculated  to  persuade  the  Mexicans  that 
Europeans  stood  on  a  higher  moral  level  than  them- 
selves. They  had  renounced  their  nationality  when 
they  entered  the  service  of  the  Emperor.  But  in  the 
general  disaster  they  hurried  to  seek  protection  from 
the  Austrian  Minister  Baron  Lago,  without  making 
the  least  effort  to  obtain  terms  for  their  Mexican 
fellow-soldiers.  Diaz,  taking  the  whole  responsibility 
on  himself,  entered  into  negotiations  with  Baron 
Lago  on  the  19th,  and  promised  favourable  terms  of 
capitulation  to  the  Austrians.  They  were  to  keep 
their  personal  baggage  though  they  were  required  to 
surrender  their  arms,  and  were  secured  a  safe  conduct 
to  Veracruz.  While  they  were  providing  for  their 
safety  Marquez  was  taking  care  of  his.  He  resigned 
the  Government  and  found  means  to  hide  himself,  till 
he  escaped  to  the  United  States.  Other  Imperialists 
who  were  very  badly  compromised  were  not  so 
fortunate.  General  Ramon  Tabera,  who  replaced 
Marquez,  endeavoured  to  obtain  a  capitulation,  and, 
on  being  told  that  he  must  surrender  at  discretion^ 
talked  of  fighting  to  the  last.  But  when  Diaz  began 
a  bombardment,  and  made  visible  preparations  for  a 
storm,  Mexico  surrendered  on  June  20.  The  town  was 
occupied  next  day. 

With  the  occupation  of  the  capital  of  the  Republic 
we  come  to  the  turning-point  in  the  life  of  Porfirio 
Diaz,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  the 
point  where  he  was  to  be  called  upon  to  show  whether 
he  had  it  in  him  to  go  further  and  higher.  His 
action  at  this  time,  both  during  and  after  the  siege, 
seems  to  prove  that  he  himself  was  conscious  that  he 
stood  at  the  place  where  his  fate  was  to  be  decided. 


ii6  DIAZ 

He  acted  as  if  he  were  consciously  presenting  himself 
to  his  countrymen  as  one  who  was  fit  to  rule,  and  might 
be  trusted  to  use  power  without  brutality.  He  con- 
fined himself  to  doing  what  was  necessary  to  secure 
the  victory  of  his  cause,  but  he  avoided  bloodshed  as 
much  as  he  could.  He  took  no  personal  revenge,  and 
those  of  the  Imperialist  partisans  who  were  captured 
and  put  to  death  died  by  order  of  the  Government, 
and  not  by  his.  If  this  was  his  purpose,  he  succeeded. 
From  the  day  of  capitulation  he  was  a  recognised 
candidate  for  the  place  of  governor  of  his  country. 
He  had  still  not  a  little  fighting,  successful  and  unsuc- 
cessful, to  do,  but  his  purely  military  life  was  over  and 
his  political  career  h^'d  begun. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE    POLITICIAN 


At  this  moment  when  we  are  at  the  turn  of  the  road 
we  must  stop  to  make  an  estimate  of  the  man,  to 
endeavour  to  see  what  he  was  in  himself,  and  what  his 
work  could  be  expected  to  be  either  in  so  far  as  it  was 
the  expression  of  his  own  capacity,  or  as  it  was 
conditioned  by  the  elements  he  had  lying  to  his  hand. 
There  is  a  known  difficulty  in  learning  what  any  man 
was,  or  is,  in  himself,  and  it  is  apt  to  be  insuperable 
when  we  lack,  as  we  do  in  the  case  of  Porfirio  Diaz, 
the  guidance  of  a  great  mass  of  private  correspon- 
dence. No  evidence  of  that  character  has  been 
published,  nor  is  it  likely  that  any  ever  will  be.  Don 
Rafael  de  Zayas  Enriquez,  author  of  a  bitter-sweet 
biographical  study,  has  stated  that  h^  never  learnt 
to  read  or  write  well.  The  very  neat  handwriting  of 
certain  notes  of  his  published  in  facsimile  vindicates 
his  penmanship,  but  we  may  take  it  for  granted  that 
he  was  no  great  writer  of  letters.  The  autobiographi- 
cal narrative  he  dictated  in  his  latter  years  shows  no 
trace  of  self-revelations.  It  is  downright  and  purely 
historical — at  least,  that  is  the  case  with  the  pub- 
lished parts  ;  and  while  it  gives  the  acts  it  does  not 
dwell  on  the  reasons  nor  the  motives.  But  we  may 
doubt  whether  there  was  anything  to  reveal.  As  he 
appears  to  the  world  Porfirio  Diaz  was  a  man  who  had 
one  rule  and  one  great  quality.  He  played  the  game, 
and  he  loved  order.     The  rule  and  the  quality  can  be 


ii8  DIAZ 

so  amply  displayed  in  act  that  autobiographical  reve- 
lations are  quite  superfluous.  His  mind  was  simple 
and  his  will  was  clear.  He  had  no  velleities,  but 
always  definite  intentions. 

This  essentially  practical  and  manly  mind  was  lodged 
in  a  most  fortunately  constituted  body.     He  is  called 
tall  by  one  who  was  himself  very  short,  and  of  middle 
height  by  another  who  judged  by  a  different  standard. 
All  agree  that  he  was  remarkably  well  put  together, 
though  he  looked  somewhat  taller  in  the  saddle  than 
he  did  on  foot.     From  this  we  may  perhaps  conclude 
that,  like  the  strong  types  of  men  belonging  to  the 
southern,  or  so-called  Latin,  races,  he  was  longer  in 
the  body  than  the  legs.     It  is  very  credible  that,  as 
some  of  his  critics  have  alleged,  he  liked  best  to  be 
seen  and  to  be  pictured  in  the  saddle.     Nor  is  it 
anywise  difficult  to  believe  that  he  liked  a  big  horse 
rather  than  a  small  one.     He  belonged  to  a  race  of 
horsemen.     He  spoke  a  language  in  which  horseman 
and  gentleman  are  synonymous.     It  is  quite  likely 
that  he  would  have  seen  nothing  absurd   in  the  old 
maxim  that  the  man  who  is  mounted  on  the  great 
horse  is  as  high  above  his  fellow-men  as  fortune  can 
place  him.     A  strongly-built  frame  is  a  great  gift  of 
Nature,  but  it  must  be  completed  by  a  sound  con- 
stitution    and    a    freedom    from    any    tendency   to 
disease.     That  Diaz  was   favoured  in  that  respect 
even   beyond  the   fortune   of  well-endowed  men  is 
proved  by  one  patent  fact.     He  lived  either  in  poverty 
or  in  constant  hardship  and  exposure  for  more  than 
half  of  a  life  of  over  eighty  years.     He  was  wounded, 
and  badly  ;    he  was  severely  burnt ;    he  was  visited 
at  least  once  by  marsh  fever  contracted  in  unwhole- 
some bivouacs.     These  injuries  and  invasions  of  germs 


THE   POLITICIAN  119 

of  disease  had  no  weakening  effect  on  him  whatever. 
They  were  thrown  off  and  left  no  evil  consequences 
behind.  He  died  of  senile  decay  when  the  strong 
body  was  worn  out. 

Other  men  have  had  these  advantages  and  have 
wasted  them.  We  have  the  testimony  of  those  who 
hated  him,  and  would  have  said  all  the  ill  they  could 
of  him,  that  he  treated  his  powerful  frame  and  his 
fine  constitution  as  instruments  to  be  kept  in  order  by 
sobriety.  For  the  first  half  of  his  life  the  conditions 
in  which  he  had  to  work  constituted  a  perpetual  train- 
ing. He  had  to  ride  by  day  and  night,  when  his 
safety  depended  on  his  nerve  and  his  vigilance.  But 
if  he  had  not  observed  the  famous  rules  of  Blaise  de 
Monluc  he  would  not  have  borne  the  strain  even  in 
his  youth.^ 

From  the  time  that  he  became  the  political  head  of 
his  country  he  made  it  his  aim  to  keep  himself  in 
training.  He  could  not  have  adopted  this  rule  if  he 
had  not  been  prepared.  His  habits  do  not  give  us  the 
chief  reason  why  he  rose,  for  men  of  a  very  different 
way  of  life  had  reached  the  place,  but  they  do  explain 
better  than  any  other  knowledge  we  have  of  him  why 
he  remained  at  the  head  for  so  many  years.  All  our 
witnesses  tell  the  same  tale,  but  the  only  one  who  need 
be   quoted  is  the   most  hostile,   Carlo  de   Fornaro, 

^  The  four  rules  of  Monluc  will  be  found  in  the  address  to  the  lieutenants 
and  captains  of  France  which  he  puts  at  the  head  of  his  Commentaries. 
They  do  not  contain  the  highest  reasons  for  observing  morality  of  conduct. 
Blaise  would  naturally  leave  them  to  his  brother  the  Bishop,  but,  speaking 
as  an  old  soldier  to  young  soldiers,  he  talks  excellent  sense.  The  passage 
is  too  long  to  quote,  but  the  substance  of  it  is  that  a  man  will  never  become 
one  of  those  good  officers  whose  services  are  indispensable  to  the  distributers 
of  promotion  unless  he  avoids  certain  sins  of  the  flesh  which  besot  and 
weaken  him,  so  that  he  will  not  have  at  command  the  clear  head,  the  steady 
nerve,  and  the  ever  active  body  which  can  rise  to  all  emergencies  by  day  or 
night. 


120  DIAZ 

author  of  a  typical  scream  of  Spanish-American 
invective.  Observe  that  Sefior  Fornaro,  in  his  "  Diaz, 
Czar  of  Mexico,"  pubHshed  in  several  languages  in 
1909,  speaks  in  this  style  of  a  passage  in  the  history 
of  the  President's  first  term  of  office  :  "  This  was  the 
finishing  stroke  of  the  most  brutish,  the  most  craven, 
and  the  wildest  orgie  of  blood  perpetrated  in  the  annals 
of  humanity ;  it  was  an  insensate  Saturnalia  of  Gore, 
the  luxurious  rage  of  an  impotent,  cowardly,  sadic 
old  despot." 

The  event  of  which  Senor  Fornaro  spoke  in  these 
rabid  words  will  be  told  under  its  proper  date.  In  the 
meantime,  this  frenzy  of  abuse  is  a  not  exceptional 
example  of  Spanish-American  political  polemics. 
The  disputants  hurl  terms  of  insult  as  if  they  were 
half-bricks  and  with  an  apparent  entire  disregard  to 
the  meaning  or  applicability  of  the  words  they  use. 
About  fifty  pages  further  on  we  get  this  account  of  the 
manner  of  life  of  the  "  sadic  old  despot  "  :  "  His  private 
life  for  the  last  thirty  years  has  been  spotless,  and 
although  surrounded  by  all  the  luxuries  he  has  led  a 
life  simple  as  a  hermit's  :  in  food  and  drink  abstemious 
as  an  Arab  ;  in  a  country  where  everybody  smokes 
he  has  been  an  exception  ;  where  alcoholism  is  ram- 
pant he  only  tastes  water  ;  where  everybody  goes  to 
bull-fights  he  stays  at  home  ;  does  not  visit  theatres 
except  at  official  functions  ;  seldom  hunts,  and  never 
plays.  Private  life,  personal  hygiene,  hard  work, 
physical  and  intellectual  economy,  have  been  con- 
centrated for  the  prolongation  of  power  through  the 
medium  of  a  perfect  body." 

He  loved  no  plays,  he  heard  no  music.  The  Presi- 
dency was  to  him,  not  a  prize  to  be  enjoyed,  but  a 
redoubt  to  be  stormed,  and  then  held  by  sleepless 


THE   POLITICIAN  121 

vigilance  and  the  same  hard  fighting  that  was  needed 
to  win  it.  Given  a  man  of  prompt  practical  faculty, 
great  physical  energy,  of  steady  purpose  and  strong 
will,  and  we  can  easily  understand  why  he  conquered 
in  the  midst  of  the  feeble  personalities,  the  social 
incoherences  and  the  political  nullities  of  Mexico. 

When  we  have  made  for  ourselves  a  picture  of  the 
manner  of  man  he  was,  we  may  before  entering  on 
his  political  career  endeavour  to  attain  to  some 
conception  of  what  he  was  likely  to  be  able  to  do. 
That  he  won  the  Presidency  and  held  it  for  a  period 
which  makes  a  long  reign  for  a  king  whose  right  was 
not  liable  to  be  contested  was  a  feat.  But  was  it  to 
be  only  the  feat  of  the  resolute  skipper  who,  pistol  in 
hand,  cows  a  mutinous  crew  and  keeps  it  to  its  duty, 
or  the  achievement  of  a  statesman  who  develops 
institutions  and  makes  a  lasting  Government  ?  A 
few  years  ago  the  general  disposition  would  have 
been  to  put  him  with  the  creative  statesmen.  There 
were  some  who  doubted.  It  is  said,  and  we  can 
believe,  that  Cecil  Rhodes  declined  to  enter  into 
certain  enterprises  in  Mexico  because  he  could  find 
no  security  that  the  peace  of  the  country  would  last 
longer  than  the  Hfe  of  President  Diaz.  He  spoke  with 
the  understanding  of  one  who  knew  what  government 
is.  The  world  at  large  was  of  another  opinion.  The 
difficulty  would  have  been  to  obtain  adhesion  to  the 
verdict  that  the  regenerator  of  Mexico,  the  creator  of 
a  new  and  better  order,  would  turn  out  to  be  only  a 
transient  keeper  of  the  peace.  Now  we  all  know  that 
the  old  disorder  welled  up  before  the  death  of  the 
strong  man  who  had  kept  it  down.  He  seemed  to 
have  failed,  and  those  who  had  been  most  ready  before 
1909  to  believe  that  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth 


122  DIAZ 

had  been  created  for  Mexico  by  him  were  not  the  least 
disposed  to  think  that  they  were  disappointed  by  his 
fault.  Those  who  were  so  quick  to  condemn  ought 
to  have  asked  themselves  whether  a  ruler  can  be  fairly 
said  to  have  failed  if  he  has  achieved  a  great  measure 
of  success  in  a  whole  generation  of  effort  to  do  the 
impossible. 

Gourgaud,  who  was  mentally  incapable  of  inventing 
it,  has  recorded  a  saying  of  Napoelon's  at  St.  Helena  : 
"  J'ai  trouve  tous  les  elements  de  I'empire.  .  .  .  Je 
ne  serais  pas  venu,  qu'el  est  probable  qu'un  autre 
aurait  fait  de  meme.  .  .  .  Un  homme  n'est  qu'un 
homme."  He  said  it  beyond  doubt,  and  his  words 
were  profoundly  true  of  himself  and  of  all  the  rulers  of 
men.  However  great  a  man  may  be,  and  in  whatever 
field  he  works,  he  is  subject  to  a  human  limitation. 
He  can  handle  what  is  given  him  to  manipulate,  but 
he  cannot  create  his  material.  The  greatest  of 
statesmen  can  do  no  more  than  the  sheep-breeders  who 
sell  the  wool,  or  the  weavers  who  make  it  into  cloth* 
They  can  breed  with  more  intelligence  and  so  im- 
prove the  wool,  or  they  can  improve  the  process  of 
weaving  and  therefore  produce  better  cloth.  The 
best  of  them  cannot  create  the  wool-bearing  animal. 
Napoleon  did  great  and  lasting  things,  but  then  he  had 
great  and  lasting  elements  lying  ready  to  be  worked 
on.  There  is  no  sort  of  comparison  between  the 
French  and  the  jarring  classes  of  Creoles,  half-breeds, 
and  Indians  who  make  up  the  population  of  Mexico. 
But  a  people  may  be  far  below  the  French  of  the 
revolutionary  epoch  in  intellect,  and  yet  offer  all  the 
elements  out  of  which  a  stable  polity  may  be  made. 
They  may  have  ideas,  aspirations,  dispositions  which 
only  need  to  be  combined  in  order  to  produce  a 


THE   POLITICIAN  123 

Government,  and  an  Administration  which  will  last 
for  centuries.  Those  were  elements  Napoleon  found 
in  France,  and  there  were  others.  The  very  parts  of 
the  Administration  he  framed,  which  still  governs 
France,  had  been  rough  hewn  for  him  by  the 
monarchy.  His  Prefect  was  the  old  Intendant.  His 
centralisation  had  been  begun  by  the  kings.  It 
never  came  to  full  development  under  them,  partly 
because  they  falsified  it  by  interference  at  the  bidding 
of  person^al  whims,  partly  because  it  was  blocked  by 
the  mouldering  remains  of  what  had  once  been  real 
instruments  of  government.  The  Revolution  burnt 
the  rubbish  away,  but  the  indestructible  parts  of  the 
old  Administration  were  there  to  be  used.  All  that 
was  necessary  was  to  put  them  together.  It  was 
the  work  of  a  constructive  statesman.  But  a  ruler  as 
great  in  capacity  as  Napoleon,  and  a  wiser  than  he, 
could  not  have  created  these  elements.  "  Un  homme 
n'est  qu'un  homme." 

Let  us  make  a  great  effort  and  assume  that  the  boy 
who  was  baptised  at  Oaxaca  on  September  15,  1830, 
had  been  a  Napoleon,  what  could  he  have  done  with 
Mexico  ?  He  could  have  kept  it  quiet,  he  could  have 
given  it  some  material  prosperity,  as  Diaz  did,  and 
that  is  all  he  could  have  done.  When  he  had  achieved 
his  utmost  the  Creole  would  have  still  been  a  Creole, 
the  half-breed  a  half-breed,  and  the  Indian  an  Indian. 
If,  indeed,  it  had  been  possible  for  a  man  living  in  the 
nineteenth  century  in  a  country  bordering  on  the 
United  States,  and  in  communication  with  Europe, 
to  get  himself  accepted  as  a  "  Son  of  the  Gods,"  he 
might  have  founded  a  sacred  race  and  a  lasting 
institution.  But  that  was  the  impossible  of  all 
impossibles.     In  the  age  he  was  born  into  and  in  his 


124  ^lAZ 

country,  all  he  could  be  was  to  be  the  constable  who 
kept  the  peace,  and  that  he  could  be  only  while  his 
strength  lasted.  We  cannot,  therefore,  fairly  ask 
that  Diaz  should  have  given  more  than  he  gave.  He 
could  only  be  the  best  of  the  so-called  Spanish- 
American  tyrants.  We  cannot  critically  compare 
him  with  a  Richelieu,  a  Cavour,  or  a  Bismarck,  who 
had  all  such  widely  different  elements  to  deal  with. 
By  the  side  of  those  statesmen  he  must  needs  look  but 
a  transient,  even  a  futile,  figure.  The  fair  comparison 
is  between  him  and  other  Spanish-American  rulers 
who  have  had  the  same  problem  to  deal  with  :  Francia 
in  Paraguay,  Juan  Manuel  Rosas  in  the  Argentine, 
Guzman  Blanco,  "  the  great  American,"  in  Colombia, 
or  Barrios  in  Central  America.  He  has  no  need  to 
fear  comparison  with  any  of  them. 

There  are  two  other  conditions  which  must  be  clearly 
realised  before  we  begin  to  look  at  his  political  career. 
They  are  the  physical  limitations  of  Mexico  and  the 
nature  of  the  Indian  population. 

In  some  parts  of  South  America  the  influx  of  foreign 
capital,  mainly  British,  and  of  foreign  labour,  of  which 
the  most  valuable  part  is  Italian,  has  bred  a  consider- 
able material  prosperity.  The  Argentine  is  the  most 
conspicuous  example.  The  growth  of  this  industry  has 
made  it  more  profitable  for  political  intriguers  to  levy 
blackmail  and  take  bribes  than  to  fight.  In  these  coun- 
tries the  essential  anarchy  of  the  community  is  skinned 
over,  and  presents  a  smooth  surface  to  the  passing 
visitor.  This  has  not  been  the  case  in  Mexico,  and  is 
not  likely  to  be.  A  great  deal  is  said  of  the  natural 
wealth  of  the  country,  but  there  is  one  fact  which 
ought  to  be  a  warning  to  those  who  are  inclined  to 
accept  all  they  are  invited  to  believe  on  this  subject. 


THE    POLITICIAN  125 

After  thirty  years — if  not  of  absolute  peace,  at  least 
of  anarchy  kept  down  by  the  parish  constable — the 
whole  trade  of  Mexico,  with  its  769,000  square  miles 
of  territory  and  a  population  estimated  at  15,000,000 
or  so,  is  not  equal  to  the  trade  of  Cuba,  which  is  little  ■ 
more  than  a  twentieth  of  its  size  andThas  a  population 
of  2,000,000.  The  estimates  of  population  are  but 
plausible  guesswork.  No  real  census  has  ever  been 
taken  in  a  Spanish  or  Portuguese  American  State. 
Yet  the  proportion  as  between  Mexico  and  Cuba  may 
be  as  15  is  to  2.  If  the  first  were  really  a  country  of 
great  natural  wealth  this  would  most  assuredly  not  be 
the  case.  It  would  at  least  be  on  a  level  with  the 
Argentine.  But  Mexico  is  not  a  country  of  great 
available  wealth.^  Old  and  New  Spain  have  a  curious 
likeness  to  one  another  in  this  respect.  Both  have  a  re- 
putation for  immense  natural  resources,  yet  both  have 
ever  been  poor,  because,  though  they  do  possess  rich 
districts  and  fine  mines,  they  consist  largely  of  barren 
rock  and  high  tablelands  of  indifferent  soil  and  ill- 
watered.  The  communications  of  both  are  obstructed. 
The  tablelands  of  Mexico  are  held  up  by  mountain 
ranges  on  east  and  west.  The  fall  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  is  precipitous,  and  that  to  the  Pacific,  though 
more  manageable,  is  steep.  Northward  from  the 
plain  of  Anahuac  the  communications  look  easy 
enough.  As  Humboldt  pointed  out  more  than  a 
century  ago,  it  would  be  perfectly  possible  to  drive  a 
wheeled  carriage  from  the  city  of  Mexico  to  the  valley 
of  the  Mississippi.  Indeed,  the  caravan  trade  con- 
ducted in  big  prairie  wagons  on  the  Santa  Fe  trail 

^  The  reader  who  wishes  to  see  this  subject  more  fully  dealt  with  may  be 
recommended  to  look  into  *'  A  Study  of  Mexico,"  by  David  A.  Wells  (New 
York,  1890,  published  by  Appleton  &  Co.). 


126  DIAZ 

came  from  St.  Louis,  on  the  Mississippi,  by  Durango 
to  Mexico.^  But  if  the  plain  is  smooth  it  is  broken 
by  districts  which  are  waterless.  Irrigation  is  diffi- 
cult, because,  with  the  exception  of  certain  breaks  in 
Central  Mexico,  the  mountains  do  not  go  beyond  the 
limit  of  eternal  snow.  The  rivers  of  both  New  and 
Old  Spain  alternate  between  being  raging  torrents, 
when  the  winter  snows  melt  on  the  hills  and  the 
spring  rains  pour  down,  and  dry  river  courses 
(barrancas)  at  other  times.  There  is  in  fact  a  great 
open  central  road  connecting  Mexico  with  the  United 
States,  and  that  may  some  day  prove  to  be  the 
physical  fact  which  will  decide  the  fate  of  the  country. 
But  the  road  is  not  a  good  one,  because  it  is  so  easy 
to  starve  or  die  of  thirst  on  it.  Therefore  Mexico 
has  not  had  the  rapid  prosperity  of  the  Argentine  and 
is  unlikely  ever  to  attain  to  that  level.  Therefore, 
also,  foreign  capital  has  never  had  the  same  influence 
as  in  the  southern  republic.  Large  tracts  of  Mexico 
are  by  nature  poor,  and  when  they  are  mountainous 
are  also  very  inaccessible.  In  them  is  a  population 
which  gains  nothing  by  such  prosperity  as  there  has 
been,  and  which  offers  a  fine  recruiting  ground  for  the 
revolutionary  and  the  brigand. 

The  position  of  the  Indian  population  of  Mexico 
when  Diaz  began  his  career  has  already  been  stated 
in  a  general  way.  But  a  few  further  details  may  be 
given,  because  they  show  what  was  one  problem  of 
government  he  had  to  deal  with.  In  the  north-west 
along  the  American  frontier  there  were  certain  tribes 
of  pure  savages  who  had  never  been  subdued  under 
colonial  rule,  and  who  grew  more  independent  and 

^  See  J.  Gregg's  "  Commerce  of  the  Prairies,"  1844,  for  an  account,  by 


THE   POLITICIAN  127 

actually  aggressive  under  the  Republic.  There  were 
tribes  like  the  Apaches,  who  were  just  savages. 
During  the  French  intervention  they  took  active  part 
against  the  Mexicans.  Over  all  the  north,  where  the 
land  is  held  in  great  estates,  the  Indians,  though 
nominally  free,  remained  in  fact  serfs.  The  Peons 
(i.e.,  pawns),  or  mere  day-labourers,  of  Indian  blood 
continued  to  be  enslaved  by  their  inherited  ideas  and 
their  improvidence.  They  have  shown  a  natural 
disposition  for  the  status  of  serf.  Strange  as  it  may 
seem,  they  appear  to  prefer  the  kind  of  fixity  of 
occupation  they  get  by  contracting  a  debt,  for  which 
they  then  pay  by  their  labour.  A  Peon  who  wishes  to 
acquire  a  wife  and  hut  takes  a  loan  from  an  employer 
and  promises  to  work  it  oflF.  He  never  does,  because 
he  is  soon  in  need  of  food  and  clothes.  Then  he  has  to 
indebt  himself  again.  A  truck  system  which  he  is 
incapable  of  checking  keeps  him  for  ever  in  debt.  One 
employer  may  let  him  go  to  another,  but  only  on 
condition  that  the  new  master  pays  his  debt.  If  he 
can  find  an  employer  on  these  terms  he  simply  passes 
from  the  old  master  to  the  new.  It  has  been  said  that 
during  the  rule  of  Diaz  the  Indians  sank  from  a 
condition  in  which  all  had  some  estate  in  the  land  to 
one  in  which  nobody  had  any  except  the  great  land- 
owners and  capitaHsts.  A  good  deal  of  fancy  has 
been  expended  on  this  social  revolution  to  the  injury 
of  the  poor.  The  "  pueblo "  Indians  whom  the 
Spaniards  found  were  living  in  a  tribal  and  com- 
munal state.  The  laws  of  the  Indies  secured  to 
certain  Indian  towns  a  ring  of  communal  land. 
These  lands  were  not  respected  when  the  Church's 
endowments  were  secularised,  and  the  Indians  suffered. 
But  the  fact  that  some  Indians  had  definite  communal 


128  DIAZ 

rights  in  specified  pieces  of  land  is  far  from  proving 
that  all  had  rights  in  the  soil.  All  the  evidence  goes 
to  show  that  they  were  serfs  under  Spanish  rule  by 
law,  and  have  continued  to  be  so  through  their  own 
inability  to  rise  to  a  better  state.  You  cannot  put  a 
five-fingered  hand  into  a  four-fingered  glove.  The 
tribal  and  communal  life  is  intelligible  to  the  Mexican 
Indian,  and  no  other  is.  When  left  to  himself  he  is 
incurably  improvident  and  idle.  Foreign  employers 
in  Mexico  have  thought  that  the  sloth  and  carelessness 
of  their  workmen  were  due  to  the  low  rate  of  wages, 
which  did  not  allow  them  to  aspire  to  any  comfort. 
In  the  hope  of  stimulating  them  to  industry  they  have 
introduced  systems  of  piece-work  by  which  men 
could  earn  twice  as  much  as  their  rate  of  pay.  They 
have  found  that  the  Indians  did  do  a  better  day's 
work  for  as  many  days  as  were  needed  to  earn  the 
equivalent  of  the  miserable  old  weekly  wage.  Then  they 
spent  the  rest  of  the  week  drunk  with  pulque  or  only 
just  in  absolute  idleness.  In  the  south  among  Juarez's 
people  and  Don  Porfirio's  the  Indians  showed  more 
character  because  they  had  kept  their  old  tribal  organi- 
sation in  the  mountains — and  the  tribe  had  no  scruple 
in  using  the  lash  on  the  drone  who  was  a  mere  burden. 
The  whole  race  has  been  degraded  by  serfdom,  but 
not  by  that  only.  An  ancient  Mexican  tradition 
which  has  at  least  a  mythical  truth  tells  how  one 
of  the  peoples  who  preceded  the  Aztecs  on  the  plain 
of  Anahuac  became  utterly  deboshed  by  drinking 
pulque  and  fell  victims  to  the  first  invader.  Pulque 
is  in  fact  a  terrible  cause  of  degradation.  It  is  easily 
made,  is  very  abundant,  and  so  cheap  as  to  be  within 
the  reach  of  the  very  poor.  Though  not  very  alcoholic, 
it    has    a    pecuHarly    besotting    effect    when    drunk 


THE   POLITICIAN  129 

continuously  and  in  large  quantities.  Those  who 
know  Spanish  America  all  agree  that  while  the  in- 
habitants of  the  low-lying  lands  are  on  the  whole 
sober,  the  mountain  populations  are  much  the  reverse. 
Mexico  is  emphatically  a  country  of  mountains  and 
high  tablelands,  and  beyond  all  dispute  it  is  very 
drunken.  What  was  to  be  done  with  a  population 
degraded  to  this  extent  by  powerful  causes  of  long 
standing  ?  A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  the 
illiteracy  of  the  Mexicans  and  the  good  effect  which 
education  would  produce.  But  the  people  of  Mexico 
have  not  been  more  illiterate  than  were  the  Englishmen 
of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  or  the  French  of  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  Their  stagnation  is  due  to  the  intellectual 
sloth  of  those  who  have  had  a  chance  to  be  literate, 
and  the  lack  of  an  intellect  capable  of  responding  to 
education  in  the  case  of  the  huge  majority  of  the 
inhabitants.  They  can  be  drilled  to  perform  some 
simple  industrial  function  in  a  mechanical  way,  but 
they  cannot  be  taught  to  show  the  intelligence  of  a 
skilled  European  workman.  The  faculty  is  lacking  ; 
and  these  hopeless  human  beings  of  an  inferior  stock 
constitute  from  a  half  to  two-thirds  of  the  population. 
They  are  the  labouring  part  of  the  nation,  and  they 
fill  the  ranks  of  the  army.  The  political  and  industrial 
fabric  of  Mexico  rests  on  such  foundation  as  they 
supply. 

Within  twenty-four  hours  of  the  surrender  of 
Mexico  Diaz  took  a  step  which  must  needs  have,  and 
we  cannot  but  believe  was  intended  to  have,  the 
appearance  of  putting  him  in  a  position  not  perhaps 
of  actual  hostility  to  the  Government  of  Juarez,  but 
of  separation  from  his  old  chief.  He  resigned  the 
command  of  the  Army  of  the   East.     His  resigna- 


130  DIAZ 

tion  was  declined,  but  he  insisted,  and  the  President 
was  forced  to  agree  to  his  wish  on  July  13.  He 
continued,  it  is  true,  to  hold  the  command  within  the 
city  till  the  21st,  because  he  could  not  be  spared  a  day 
sooner.  It  is  claimed  on  his  behalf,  and  cannot  be 
seriously  denied,  that  nothing  but  his  firmness  saved 
the  city  from  plunder  and  massacre.  His  army, 
thanks  to  his  good  discipline,  which  was  made 
possible  by  his  careful  management  of  the  money 
raised  in  the  south,  was  well  in  hand.  But,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  his  original  force  had  been  largely 
recruited  during  the  blockade  by  bands  of  patriots 
who  did  not  so  much  spring  from  the  soil  as  descend 
from  the  Sierras.  They  burdened  him  with  offers  of 
assistance,  which,  as  he  well  knew,  covered  a  lively 
wish  to  share  in  the  spoils.  His  most  pressing 
obligation  was  to  keep  them  out  of  the  city  till 
measures  had  been  taken  to  forestall  their  entry. 
For  twenty-four  hours  nobody  was  permitted  to  go 
in.  The  interval  was  long  enough  to  allow  of  a  hasty 
arrangement  between  the  victorious  general  and  those 
of  the  townsmen  who  possessed  ready  money,  and 
therefore  had  the  best  of  reasons  for  fearing  an  out- 
break of  robbery.  The  first  troops  to  enter  were 
picked  among  the  bands  he  had  brought  to  a  fair  state 
of  discipline,  and  their  morality  was  confirmed  by  a 
payment  of  arrears.  When  all  restrictions  were 
removed,  the  less  trustworthy  elements  of  the  patriot 
army  poured  in,  only  to  be  met  by  what  our  Eliza- 
bethan ancestors  would  have  called  "  a  cooling  card." 
They  found  the  plunderable  parts  of  the  city  already 
occupied  by  well-placed  troops  standing  to  arms,  and 
they  saw  a  plainly-printed  notice  in  conspicuous 
places  to  the  effect  that  any  man  caught  pillaging 


THE   POLITICIAN  131 

would  be  hanged  out  of  hand.  They  knew  their 
man,  and  the  confidence  that  was  due  to  his  word. 
Diaz  saved  his  cause  from  disgrace,  and  if  it  was 
added  unto  him  that  he  gained  the  good  opinion 
of  the  moneyed  men  that  reward  was  creditably 
earned. 

On  July  13  Juarez  and  his  Government  returned 
from  their  years  of  exile  and  wandering  in  the  north. 
The  national  treasury  was  empty,  and  an  army  of 
about  100,000  men,  largely  armed  mobs,  was  con- 
centrated in  and  around  the  city.  The  $300,000 
from  the  military  chest  of  the  Army  of  the  East  which 
Diaz  handed  over  at  once  to  the  President  represented 
the  whole  of  the  funds  immediately  available  to  meet 
all  the  expenses  of  government.  The  service  was  great 
and  timely.  Moreover,  it  was  not  long  since  Don 
Porfirio  had  given  a  marked  proof  of  his  loyalty. 
Don  Benito's  term  of  office  as  President  had  run  out 
in  the  previous  year.  Some  of  those  about  him  had 
seized  the  opportunity  to  declare  that  as  the  Con- 
stitution forbade  a  re-election  of  a  President  he  must 
retire  and  make  room  for  a  successor.  "  Ote  toi  de  la 
que  moi  je  m'y  mette  "  is  in  Spanish  America  the 
most  universally  acted  on  of  all  the  phrases  applicable 
to  poHtics.  It  is  but  just  to  allow  that  this  sadly 
characteristic  example  of  Mexican  anarchy  met  little 
approval.  The  pushful  persons  who  took  the  moment 
when  French  troops  were  still  on  the  soil  of  Mexico  and 
the  intrusive  Imperial  Government  had  still  an  army 
in  the  field,  to  stand  on  the  letter  of  the  law  and  insist 
on  performing  the  farce  of  holding  a  Presidential 
election  were  ill  looked  on.  The  United  States 
continued  to  treat  Juarez  as  the  legitimate  President. 
Diaz,  who  controlled  the  whole  south,  might  have 

K  2 


132  DIAZ 

given  serious  trouble  if  he  had  had  no  more  good 
feeling  and  political  sense  than  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries. But,  though  he  was  by  this  time  well 
aware  where  he  meant  in  the  end  to  go,  he  was  not  the 
man  to  show  overhaste.  He  declared  that  the  Indian 
who  had  represented  the  independence  of  Mexico 
during  years  of  defeat  and  suffering  must  not  be 
displaced  till  victory  was  won.  Juarez  was  formally 
recognised  as  President  in  his  camp. 

Yet  when  the  two  met  it  was  as  friends  between 
whom  a  gulf  was  opening.  Diaz  declared  in  after- 
times  that  Juarez  had  begun  to  be  cold  to  him  about 
the  time  of  the  siege  of  Puebla.  He  had  barely  acknow- 
ledged the  report  of  its  capture  and  had  added  no 
thanks.  The  explanation  of  his  ill-will  is  not  difficult 
to  find.  The  mere  course  of  events  had  made  the  two 
rivals.  There  is  everywhere  such  a  thing  as  serving 
your  cause  too  well.  When  he  who  renders  the 
service  puts  himself  in  the  superior  position  it  is  hard 
for  the  person  served  to  feel  nothing  but  gratitude. 
Now  this  was  what  Diaz  had  done.  Others  had 
fought  hard  and  forwarded  the  cause,  but  none  of 
them  had  to  their  credit  the  recovery  of  the  South  and 
the  taking  of  Puebla  and  the  capital.  He  was  marked 
out  as  a  present  rival  and  future  successor.  Juarez 
is  believed  to  have  been  a  disinterested  man,  and  yet 
we  must  not  expect  too  much  virtue  even  from  the 
best.  He  was  poor,  and  the  loss  of  the  Presidential 
chair  would  inevitably  destroy  his  means  of  support. 
Cincinnatus  can  return  to  his  plough  when  he  is 
Cincinnatus — that  is  to  say,  when  he  is  not  only  a 
virtuous  man,  but  a  patrician  who  owes  his  place  in 
the  world  to  his  birth,  not  to  his  means.  Juarez  was 
a  lawyer  without  fortune,  for  whom  the  loss  of  the 


THE   POLITICIAN  133 

Presidency  must  entail  the  necessity  for  beginning 
life  again  in  his  old  age.  The  governorship  of  his 
native  State  might  have  been  a  dignified  refuge,  but 
he  had  lost  his  hold  on  Oaxaca  during  the  war  when 
he  was  far  away  and  Diaz  was  on  the  spot.  How 
could  he  feel  friendly  to  the  former  subordinate  who 
was,  not  indeed  maliciously,  but  by  the  force  of  cir- 
cumstances, supplanting  him  ? 

Moreover,  unless  we  are  to  dismiss  the  word  of  Don 
Porfirio  himself  as  worthless,  he  had  just  done  some- 
thing which  outweighed  many  services.  He  had 
given  the  President  a  lesson,  and  a  rather  humiliating 
one.  When  he  reported  the  capitulation  of  Mexico 
he  received  an  order  to  place  the  French  Minister, 
M.  Dano,  under  arrest  and  to  take  possession  of  the 
archives  of  the  Embassy.  He  at  once  refused,  telling 
Juarez  that  since  they  already  had  the  ill-will  of 
Napoleon,  they  had  better  not  add  that  of  France  by 
insulting  its  honour.  Juarez  made  no  answer.  Diaz 
pressed  him  to  send  somebody  else  to  carry  out  the 
order,  but  nobody  came.  M.  Dano,  who  had  obvious 
reasons  for  not  wishing  to  be  in  Mexico  when  Juarez 
returned,  applied  for  a  safe  conduct  to  Veracruz,  and 
Diaz  gave  it  at  once.  His  prompt  resignation  of  his 
command  of  the  Army  of  the  East  had  much  the 
appearance  of  having  been  a  measure  of  precaution 
meant  to  leave  him  free  to  refuse  to  obey.  It  was 
unquestionably  a  sign  that  he  felt  himself  strong 
enough  to  dispense  with  official  rank. 

Yet  he  tells  us  that  he  was  at  this  time  hard  pressed 
for  money.  During  the  war  he  had  been  content  to 
draw  from  the  military  chest  he  himself  had  filled  no 
more  than  was  enough  to  provide  for  his  daily  needs. 
He  now  offered  to  acknowledge  that  he  had  received 


134  I^IAZ 

a  third  of  what  was  due  to  him,  though  as  a  matter  of 
fact  he  had  taken  less.     It  was  not  safe  to  fob  off  a 
creditor  of  his  standing,  and  Juarez  offered  $21,000 
in  payment  of  all  claims.     Diaz  was  careful  to  warn 
the   President   that   he  would  not   consider  himself 
bound  to  follow  any  particular  line  of  conduct  laid 
down  for  him  in  consideration  of  this  payment,  and 
he  says  he  added  that  the  issue  of  the  money  from  the 
treasury  might  be  stopped  if  it  was  to  be  hampered 
by  any  condition.     The  relations  of  the  President  and 
the  General  must  have  been  tart  indeed  by  this  time. 
But  the   $21,000  were  duly  paid  to  Don  Porfirio's 
agent,  Jose  de  Teresa.     Diaz  had  spoken  to  Juarez  of 
his  intention  to  go  into  business.     The  business  he  did 
go  into  took  the  strange  form  of  gifts  of  $17,000  to 
support  a  newspaper,  a  rapid  and  effectual  method 
of  evacuation.     The  balance  was  stolen  in  the  house 
of  his  agent,  and  he  only  recovered  a  half.     Though 
he  persisted  in  resigning  his  more  important  com- 
mands, he  continued  at  the  head  of  the  2nd  Division  of 
the  army  till  i860,  when  he  retired  with  the  remnant 
of  his  $21,000  to  a  farm  called  La  Noria  (Waterwheel), 
which  had  been  conferred  on  him  by  his  native  State. 
In  estimating  these  and  other  sums  named  in  dollars 
we  must  bear  in  mind  the  effect  produced  on  the 
currency   of   Mexico    by   the  depreciation   of   silver 
during  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.    The 
Republic  adhered  for  long  to  the  silver  standard,  and 
its  money  fell  in  exchange  value  till  the  process  was 
stopped,  as  will  be  told  further  on,  by  the  financial 
measures  of  Sefior  Limantour.    In  1868  $21,000  made 
a  larger  sum  than  they  would  have  done  when  the 
coin  had  reached  its  present  level  of  2s.  old.     He  had 
married  his  first  wife,  Delfina  Ortega  y  Reges,  during 


THE   POLITICIAN  135 

the  siege.  We  know  little  of  Dona  Delfina  except 
that  she  bore  her  husband  three  children  and  died 
young.  For  two  years  they  lived  quietly  on  their 
farm,  and  Don  Porfirio  applied  himself  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  sugar-cane. 

There  was  in  after  times  no  lack  of  persons  who  were 
ready  to  ask  him  why  he  did  not  rest  content  to  go  on 
planting  the  sugar-cane.     They  made  it  a  matter  of 
reproach  to  him  that  he  too  became  an  agitator  in  due 
course,  and  joined  those  who  perpetuated  the  disorder 
of  the  country  by  disobedience  to  the  law  and  the 
selfish  pursuit  of  their  personal  ambitions.     These 
critics  omit  to  show  what  it  was  incumbent  on  them 
to  prove — namely,  that  there  was  any  law  in  Mexico 
to  obey  save  in  the  impotent  form  of  mere  words  on 
paper.     As  for  the  charge  of  ambition,  it  is  cheaply 
brought  against  every  man  who  in  any  polity  tries  to 
rise    to    great    place.     The    Earl    of    Chatham    was 
ambitious,  for  he  believed  that  he  could  save  the 
country,  and  that  nobody  else  could.     Holding  that 
faith,  he  did  well  to  seek  power.   "  For  good  thoughts," 
says  Bacon,  "  (though  God  accept  them)  yet  toward 
men  are  little  better  than  good  dreams,  except  they 
be  put  in  act ;  and  that  cannot  be  without  power  and 
place,  as  the  vantage  and  commanding  ground."     The 
ambitious  man  stands  or  falls  by  what  he  does  with 
the  power  when  it  is  in  his  hands.     Diaz  would  never 
have  had  an  opportunity  to  do  good  to  his  country 
if  he  had  waited  till  a  united  Mexican  people,  or  even 
a  well-disciplined  Mexican  party,  came  to  La  Noria 
to  interrupt  him  while  he  was  cutting  his  harvest  of 
sugar-cane  with  his  machete  (his  cane-knife)  and  peti- 
tion him  to  take  the  Republic  in  hand.     He  had  to 
win   the   means   of   doing   good,   and   that    by  such 


136  DIAZ 

methods  as  the  society  he  was  born  in  forced  him  to 
use.  Chatham  could  do  no  other,  though  he  was 
more  happily  placed  than  Don  Porfirio.  He  had  to 
co-operate  with  men  whom  he  despised,  and  allow 
them  to  help  him  for  their  own  ends  by  the  use  of 
means  which  his  soul  loathed.  "  The  rising  unto 
place  is  laborious,  and  by  pains  men  come  to  greater 
pains  ;  and  it  is  sometimes  base,  and  by  indignities 
men  come  to  dignities."  Diaz  was  born  in  the  midst  of 
a  blood-stained  anarchy,  and  had  to  rise  by  the  use  of 
force.  He  is  to  be  judged  by  what  he  did  with  the 
power  he  conquered. 

Anarchy  is  the  one  name  for  the  condition  of 
Mexico  after  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  army  and 
the  death  of  Maximilian,  as  it  had  been  before.  Juarez, 
it  is  true,  was  formally  re-elected  President  at  the  end 
of  1 867,  though  re-election  was  forbidden  by  the  Con- 
stitution— a  tolerably  clear  proof  of  the  little  respect 
felt  for  the  letter  of  the  law  in  Mexico.  We  must 
believe  that  gratitude  had  a  share  in  confirming  him 
in  power,  but  it  is  certainly  the  fact  that  there  was 
nobody  at  that  moment  who  could  have  secured 
sufficient  support  to  oppose  him.  Support  does  not 
mean  votes,  which  have  never  decided  anything  in  a 
Spanish-American  republic,  but  an  adequate  military 
force  to  dictate  to  the  voters  over  a  sufficient  part  of 
the  country.  We  ought  not  to  blame  Don  Benito  if 
his  administration  failed  to  restore  peace  to  Mexico. 
The  treasury  was  empty.  Foreign  nations  had  lost 
all  confidence  in  the  promises  of  the  Republic  and 
would  lend  no  money.  Indeed,  civilised  peoples, 
except  the  United  States,  stood  aloof  from  the 
Republic  for  a  time.  The  United  States  could  not 
help,  for  they  were  not  then  able  to  dispense  with 


THE   POLITICIAN  137 

foreign  capital  for  their  own  needs.  The  country  was 
swarming  with  broken  men,  brigandage,  and  ''  pro- 
nunciamientos."  The  Roman  Catholic  clergy,  then 
and  for  some  years  to  come,  were  unscrupulous  in 
fomenting  disorder.  The  Government  lacked  the 
means  to  pay  a  regular  force  to  do  the  most  elemen- 
tary police  work.  It  was  the  President's  bad  fortune 
that  the  years  of  his  administration  were  full  of 
earthquakes,  bad  harvests,  and  disease.  Yet,  when 
every  allowance  has  been  made,  it  must  be  recognised 
that  the  taciturn  Indian  patience,  which  had  served 
Juarez  and  Mexico  well  during  the  years  of  the  French 
intervention,  was  but  a  negative  quality.  It  was  after 
all  only  a  power  to  endure  and  more  was  needed  to 
establish  order.  Yet  it  was  all  that  Jurarez  had  to 
give. 

As  his  term  drew  to  an  end  it  became  clear  that  the 
Indian  tenacity  of  the  President,  his  stolid  capacity 
for  staying  where  he  was  and  looking  in  silent 
obstinacy  at  all  menaces,  was  about  to  be  shown  by 
an  attempt  to  retain  his  seat.  In  other  words,  he 
was  preparing  to  violate  the  provision  of  a  Convention 
he  had  helped  to  make.  There  goes  a  story  which  at 
any  rate  conveys  a  truth,  whether  the  thing  happened 
exactly  as  it  is  told  or  not.  Juarez,  so  the  tale  runs, 
had  it  out  with  Diaz  between  themselves,  and  said 
to  him  by  way  of  closing  the  interview  :  "  You  will 
be  President  some  day,  but  not  while  I  live." 
Whether  these  words  were  ever  uttered  or  not,  it  is 
not  the  less  true  that  they  state  the  intention  of  Don 
Benito.  He  would  be  President  while  he  lived,  which, 
of  course,  implied  that  he  would  make  his  own 
re-election  by  setting  his  dependent  mob  of  place- 
holders to  work,   by  bribing,  falsifying  the  lists   of 


138  DIAZ 

electors,  threats  to  use  force,  and  at  a  pinch  by  actual 
slaughter.^ 

It  would  surely  tax  the  ingenuity  of  the  most  in- 
genious  apologist   to   show   that   the   cause   of   the 
President  was  also  the  cause  of  law  and  order.     He 
was  confessedly  preparing  to  violate  the  law  ;    and 
there  was  no  means  of  prevailing  on  him  to  stop  except 
by  the  use  of  force.     In  the  natural  course  of  things, 
there  were  not  wanting  those  who  were  prepared  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  means  so  familiar  in  Mexican 
politics.     The  name  "  party  "  must  still  be  taken  to 
stand  for  a  body  of  men  who  hold  certain  principles 
and    try    to    carry    them    out    in    the    conduct    of 
government.     But  in  Mexico  nothing  was  at  stake 
except  the  question  who  was  to  be  President.     It  will 
avoid  confusion  if  we  use  another  term  once  familiar 
enough  among  ourselves,  and  say  that  there  were 
three  connections  in  Mexican  politics — the  Juaristas, 
the  Lerdistas,  and  the  Porfiristas.     The  first  were  the 
supporters  of  Juarez,  largely  place-holders,  who  have 
been   called   Conservatives.      They  held  the  places, 
and  thought  that  all  would  be  well  if  they  could  only 
"  conserve  "  them.     The  Lerdistas  were  the  followers 
of  that  Don  Sebastian  Lerdo  de  Tejada  whose  brother 
Don  Miguel  had  been  Minister  of  Grace  and  Justice 
under  Juarez.     They  called  themselves  the  "  Evolu- 

^  It  is  but  a  few  years  since  a  very  pretty  example  was  given  in  Rio 
Janeiro  of  the  "  Latin  "  American  method  of  consulting  the  free  and 
independent  voter.  It  was  known  that  the  candidate  who  was  not  to  be 
allowed  to  be  returned  would  probably  receive  a  good  many  votes  in  a 
certain  district.  On  the  day  of  the  election  the  approaches  to  the  ballot- 
boxes  were,  in  the  usual  way,  occupied  by  **  capangas,"  that  is  to  say,  negro 
bullies  armed  with  cudgels  and  revolvers.  At  an  early  hour  a  proclamation 
was  published  to  the  effect  that  in  view  of  the  danger  to  public  peace  arising 
from  the  excited  passions  of  the  district  the  Government  had  decided  to 
close  the  poll  and  to  count  only  the  votes  given  before  the  hour  of  closing. 
Of  course  they  were  the  votes  of  the  "  capangas." 


THE   POLITICIAN  139 

tionists,"  and  they  held  the  faith  that  all  would  be 
well  if  only  in  the  process  of  evolution  they  could 
occupy  the  places.  The  Porfiristas  were,  as  their  name 
shows,  the  followers  of  Don  Porfirio  Diaz,  and  they 
called  themselves  Radicals.  It  was  their  fundamental 
principle  that  no  good  would  be  done  till  a  radical 
sweep  had  been  made  of  the  others  and  they  were 
masters  of  the  situation.  The  future  was  to  show  that 
they  were  not  mistaken.  Where  what  was  at  stake 
was  the  personality  of  the  future  administrator,  the 
cause  of  the  most  capable  man  was  the  good  cause. 

The  election  was  to  be  held  in  the  autumn  of  1871, 
when  Juarez's  four  years,  counting  from  the  election 
in  1867,  would  be  at  an  end.     The  Juaristas  had,  of 
course,  the  advantage  of  the  support  of  the  place- 
holders.    But  Lerdo  de  Tejada  had  availed  himself 
of  his  ministerial  position  to  plant  not  a  few  friends  of 
his  own  in  offices  where  they  could  be  useful.     Diaz 
had  the  aid  of  all  who  were  not  provided  for  by  the 
others,  and  also,  it  is  said,  of  not  a  few  old  Imperialists 
who,  if  they  did  not  love  him,  hated  Juarez  and  Lerdo. 
When  it  came  to  voting  each  of  the  three  connections 
was  found  to  have  sufficient  local  influence  to  secure 
the  return  of  its  own  man  in  its  own  territory.     We 
hear,  of  course,  that  the  power  of  the  Administration 
was  employed  to  the  full ;    that  towns  which  noto- 
riously contained  a  population  of  2,000  were  recorded 
to  have  cast  2,500  votes  for  Don  Benito  ;    and,  in 
short,  that  the  force  and  fraud  of  a  sham  election  was 
in  full  swing.     In  spite  of  this  vigorous  employment 
of  the  traditional  methods,  Juarez  failed  to  get  an 
absolute  majority.     The  votes  were  5,837  for  Juarez, 
2,874  ^^^  Lerdo,  and  3,555  for  Diaz.     The  decision 
rested  with  Congress,  which  as  a  matter  of  course 


140  DIAZ 

decided  in  favour  of  Juarez.  It  had  been  made  by 
him  in  the  well-known  way.  His  opponents  showed 
no  more  respect  for  the  freedom  of  voters  than  he  did. 
They  applied  pressure  and  made  bargains  just  as  he 
did.  He  won  because  his  control  of  the  Central 
Government  gave  him  the  best  means  for  applying 
pressure  and  making  bargains. 

It  would  have  been  strange  if  the  defeated  parties 
had  rested  content  with  this  settlement.  We  are 
assured  that  they  were  honestly  persuaded  that  the 
re-election  of  a  President  was  contrary  to  democratic 
principles.  It  is  a  nice  question  why  the  sovereign 
people,  which  is  alone  entitled  to  choose  its  ruler,  is 
to  be  cabined  and  cribbed  and  confined  when  in  the 
exercise  of  its  rights  it  chooses  the  same  man  twice 
running.  The  inquiry  would  be  the  more  unneces- 
sary in  the  present  case,  because  when  the  course  of 
events  carried  Lerdo  to  the  Presidency  he  began  to 
provide  for  his  own  re-election,  and  when  later  on  the 
Presidency  came  to  Diaz  he  was  more  re-elected  than 
any  man  in  Spanish-American  history.  It  will  be 
right  to  state  what  the  different  connections  professed 
that  they  were  going  to  do.  The  make-beHeve  of 
politicians  has  always  a  certain  value,  for  it  throws 
some  light  on  the  moral  and  intellectual  reaHties  of 
the  political  stage  on  which  the  fictions  are  thought 
likely  to  tell  on  the  gallery.  But  we  would  treat 
some  things  with  a  respect  they  do  not  deserve  if  we 
spoke  of  them  as  being  more  than  what  they  were. 
It  would  be  easy  to  fill  pages  with  the  promises  of 
constitutional  improvements  made  by  Juarez  when  he 
was  standing  for  President  at  the  end  of  1867,  and  for 
some  time  afterwards.  But  as  they  were  all  dropped 
when  they  had  served  their  purpose,  the  enumeration 


THE   POLITICIAN  141 

would  be  merely  tedious.  The  substantial  facts  which 
we  have  to  bear  in  mind  in  regard  to  him  are  that  he 
proved  doggedly  hostile  to  the  Imperialists,  and  that 
he  reduced  the  army  wholesale. 

fi  His  implacability  to  the  Imperialists  offended  not 
them  only  but  many  Mexicans  who  thought  he  simply 
perpetuated  divisions  and  causes  of  trouble.  An 
amnesty  was  passed  in  1870,  but  with  exceptions,  and 
not  till  many  Mexicans  had  been  driven  into  exile, 
and  many  had  escaped  the  entire  confiscation  of  their 
property  by  the  payment  of  heavy  fines.  They 
remained  embittered  and  on  the  outlook  for  a  chance  of 
taking  their  revenge.  The  moderation  which  Diaz 
had  shown  at  all  times,  and  more  especially  when  he 
forced  the  city  of  Mexico  to  surrender,  pointed  him 
out  as  the  one  leader  they  could  best  join.  When  he 
hurried,  as  we  have  seen  that  he  did,  to  disassociate 
himself  from  Juarez,  in  June,  1867,  he  may  have,  he 
probably  had,  a  definite  intention  to  offer  himself  to 
all  Mexicans  as  the  man  who  would  divide  them  the 
least. 

The  reduction  of  the  army  was  no  doubt  a  necessity. 
With  the  best  will  in  the  world,  Juarez  could  not  in 
1 867  and  1868  pay,  or  pension,  a  force  of  100,000  men 
or  so.  But  the  officers  and  men  who  were  thrown  out 
of  employment  penniless  in  a  country  poor  at  the  best 
of  times,  and  now  disorganised  in  its  industry  as  in 
everything  else,  were  not  in  a  position  which  made  it 
possible  for  them  to  look  on  his  action  with  a  cool 
impartiality.  They  provided  the  general  staff  and 
the  rank  and  file  of  all  the  forces  of  disorder  which 
kept  the  country  in  a  turmoil  throughout  his  adminis- 
tration. It  was  inevitable  that  they  should  help  to 
recruit  the  connections  opposed  to  him,  and  that  the 


142  DIAZ 

leader  they  preferred  should  have  been  Porfirio  Diaz, 
a  soldier  like  themselves,  and  one  who  had  quickly 
and  emphatically  marked  his  alienation  from  the  policy 
of  the   Indian   President,   and  who,   moreover,   had 
always  taken  great  care  of  his  own  men.     We  shall 
see  that  when,  after  a  first  failure  and  some  years  of 
conflict,  Don  Porfirio  became  President,  he  made  it  a 
rule  to  treat  the  army,  that  part  which  had  fought 
against  him  as  well  as  that  which  fought  for  him, 
with  consideration.     It  was  a  proof  of  his  faculty  to 
recognise  facts  that  he  always  dealt  with  the  army  as 
being  the  decisive  force  in  Mexican  politics.     Then 
Juarez  did  a  thing  which  one  cannot  wholly  condemn, 
since  he  was  but  insisting  on  his  rights,  but  was  sure 
to  appear  invidious  to  the  multitudes  of  Mexicans, 
soldiers  included,  who  were  not  allowed  to  do  them- 
selves justice.      He  insisted  on  a  regulation  of  his 
accounts  with  the  treasury,  and  on  the  payment  of 
his  arrears.     They  amounted  to    $75,000.     He  was 
by  general   confession   neither   corrupt   nor   greedy. 
When  his  opportunities  are  taken  into  account  he 
must  be  said  to  have  died  poor,  for  he  left  his  family 
only  about  $120,000.     But  the  arrears  he  took  from 
an  exhausted  treasury  were  more  than  half  the  total 
sum.     In  a  country  where  the  judgments  passed  on 
public  men  are  less  malignant  than  they  are  apt  to  be 
in  Mexico  there  would  not  have  been  lacking  people  to 
say  that  he  used  his  official  power  for  his  own  benefit, 
and  that  if  he  strove  to  secure  his  re-election  it  was 
because  he  wanted  to  increase  his  fortune.     Juarez, 
as  a  native  commentator  on  his  life  remarked,  died  in 
a    happy    hour    for    him    and    before    "  ingratitude 
assassinated  him,"  but  he  had  himself  been  ungrateful 
to  those  who  had  served  his  cause  ;    and  we  may  be 


THE   POLITICIAN  143 

sure  that  this  sententious  judgment  expressed  a  very 
common  opinion. 

It  is  insuperably  difficult  to  discover  what  was  the 
connection  of  Don  Sebastian  Lerdo.  It  was  visibly 
the  weakest  of  the  three  which  divided  Mexico. 
When  events  which  are  now  to  be  told  carried  him 
into  the  Presidential  chair,  he  himself  treated  it  with 
entire  contempt.  But  his  odd  story  must  not  be 
forestalled.  He  was  a  Creole,  an  accomplished  man, 
and  a  lawyer.  His  brother  Don  Miguel  had  been  a 
foremost  leader  in  the  fight  with  the  Church,  and  Don 
Sebastian  benefited  by  his  popularity  with  the 
Liberals.  But  the  foundation  of  his  political  impor- 
tance was  that  he  was  President  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
and  therefore,  by  virtue  of  a  tradition  which,  strangely- 
enough,  had  survived  from  the  colonial  epoch,  was 
entitled  to  succeed  the  President  of  the  Republic  in 
case  of  his  death  or  disappearance  for  any  other 
reason.  We  have  seen  how  Juarez  himself  when  in 
the  same  position  had  used  this  right  of  succession. 
It  may  seem  strange  that  he  should  have  left  a 
political  opponent  in  a  place  of  so  much  prestige.  The 
probability  is  that  he  knew  he  could  not  displace  Don 
Sebastian  without  driving  him  into  active  alliance 
with  the  Porfiristas  ;  and  Don  Benito  was  no  bad 
master  of  the  art  of  dividing  in  order  to  rule. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    FIGHT   FOR   THE    PRESIDENCY 

From  1871  to  1877  Diaz  was  engaged  in  the 
struggle  which  ended  by  making  him  President  of 
Mexico.  During  the  first  of  these  six  years  his 
opponent  was  Juarez.  For  the  rest  of  the  time  he  was 
in  conflict  with  Lerdo  and  then  with  a  new  enemy, 
Don  Jose  M.  Iglesias.  His  course  was  not  unchecked, 
nor  was  his  victory  easy. 

When  the  Congress  declared  Juarez  duly  elected  on 
October  12,  1871,  Diaz  allowed  some  three  weeks  to 
pass  before  he  took  open  action.  The  riotous  protests 
made  at  various  towns  by  his  followers  could  hardly 
have  taken  place  if  he  had  been  known  to  disapprove 
of  them  strongly,  but  he  did  not  hasten  to  produce 
the  "  plan  "  which  invariably  states  the  case  of  a 
Mexican  "  pronunciamiento,"  and  is  the  notification 
to  all  whom  it  may  concern  that  a  party  is  in  arms. 
The  methods  used  in  the  constitutional  conflicts  of  the 
Republic  are  not  ours,  but  they  have  this  much  in 
common  with  the  usages  of  British  or  American 
parties,  that  they  include  a  programme  or  platform, 
and  a  "  good  cry  "  with  which  "  to  go  to  the  country." 
There,  too,  as  in  countries  of  less  picturesque  ways, 
political  action  is  preceded  by  consultations  of 
managers,  and  a  leader  has  to  yield  to  the  solicitations 
of  enthusiastic  supporters.  Don  Porfirio  states  that 
it  was  on  the  urgent  appeals  of  his  friends  that  he 
finally  decided  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  a  revo- 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY    145 

lutionary  movement.  The  council  in  which  the  reso- 
lution to  act  was  taken  was  held  at  his  hacienda,  or 
ranch,  La  Noria,  on  or  about  November  8.  The 
programme  was  drawn  up  and  the  cry  was  raised. 
As  the  first  was  subsequently  revised  and  reissued  at 
other  places,  no  more  need  be  said  of  it  now  than  that 
it  was  based  on  the  demand  for  the  Constitution  of 
1857  ^^^  freedom  of  election.  The  cry  adopted  has 
inevitably  a  somewhat  ironic  tone  when  we  consider 
it  as  having  been  raised  by  the  strongest  administrator 
who  has  ever  held  Mexico  in  his  hand.  It  consisted 
of  the  words  "  Menos  Gobierno  y  mas  Libertades  " 
("  Less  Government  and  more  Freedom ").  The 
candid  critic  who  has  been  freely  quoted  already,  and 
to  whom  we  shall  have  to  listen  again,  Don  Rafael  de 
Zayas  Enriquez,  is  of  opinion  that  at  this  stage  in  the 
"  evolution  "  of  his  mind  and  character  Don  Porfirio 
did  truly  believe  that  the  great  need  of  his  country 
was  more  freedom.^  Experience  during  the  years 
immediately  following  the  promulgation  of  the  Plan 
of  La  Noria,  in  the  opinion  of  the  same  authority, 
taught  him  that  Mexico  suffered,  not  from  over- 
government,  but  from  the  total  lack  of  governance, 
or  the  bad  quality  of  such  as  it  had  received,  and  also 
that  it  stood  in  more  need  of  discipline  than  of  greater 
freedom.  The  history  of  the  next  forty  years  cer- 
tainly appears  to  confirm  the  judgment  of  Don 
Rafael. 

The  response  to  the  cry  of  La  Noria  was  loud  and 
widespread.  In  this  case,  indeed,  action  had  preceded 
the  word.  Don  Porfirio's  friends  had  drawn  the 
sword  before  he  blew  the  horn,  for  they  had  seized 
the  Government's  artillery  and  stores  in  Oaxaca.  In 
many  parts  of  Mexico  the  Porfiristas,  or  Radicals,  or 


146  DIAZ 

Constitutionalists  (they  used  that  name  also),  rose 
and  took  possession  of  the  local  governments.  But, 
though  the  revolt  was  sufficiently  formidable  to  put 
Juarez  in  serious  danger,  its  progress  was  disappoint- 
ing after  the  first  days.  The  peaceful  elements  in 
the  population  were  frightened  by  the  prospect  of  a 
renewal  in  a  still  worse  form  of  the  troubles  of  the  last 
years.  As  it  has  been  the  fate  of  peaceful  Mexicans 
to  be  sacrificed  to  armed  factions,  their  fears  might 
have  had  no  power  to  injure  the  Porfiristas.  But 
Juarez  had  an  attached  following  which  stood  by 
him  and  the  control  of  the  central  Administration. 
And  then  the  rather  patchwork  following  of  Don 
Sebastian  Lerdo,  though  it  was  by  no  means  loyal 
to  the  President,  was  far  from  being  disposed  to 
aid  the  Porfiristas.  It  did  not  wish  to  exchange 
King  Log  for  King  Stork.  Then  the  premature 
outbreaks  which  preceded  the  "  pronunciamiento  " 
of  November  had  given  Juarez  the  opportunity 
to  weaken  his  enemy  in  detail.  He  put  down  a 
rising  in  the  capital  ferociously,  and  was  even  able 
to  take  the  offensive  when  he  heard  of  the  revolt  in 
Oaxaca. 

The  old  President  acted  with  commendable  prompti- 
tude, and  he  was  helped  by  the  fact  that  Diaz,  after 
'seeing  the  movement  well  on  foot  in  Oaxaca,  hurried 
with  100  horse  to  get  his  supporters  in  the  centre  and 
north  well  in  hand.  The  Juarista  general,  Latorre, 
marched  into  Oaxaca,  defeated  Don  Porfirio's 
lieutenant,  Luis  Mier,  at  San  Mateo  Xindihui  in 
December,  and  occupied  the  town  in  January  of  1872. 
Felix  Diaz,  who  was  in  command,  found  himself 
unable  to  defend  it,  and,  falling  back  on  his  old  life, 
took  to  the  Sierra.     His  career  was,  however,  short. 


THE   FIGHT  FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY    147 

Before  the  end  of  the  month  he  was  surprised  while 
almost  alone  by  a  party  of  local  enemies  from  Tehuan- 
tepec  and  murdered.  The  insurrection  in  Oaxaca 
appeared  to  be  wholly  suppressed,  but  in  Mexico,  as 
we  have  seen  and  shall  see,  this  only  means  that  it 
had  failed  to  win  for  the  moment.  The  conditions 
which  produced  it  were  not  altered,  and  continued  to 
produce  their  normal  consequences. 

While  his  cause  was  at  any  rate  superficially  beaten 
in  the  south,  Don  Porfirio  was  not  able  to  make  head 
effectually  in  the  centre  of  the  country.  He  reached 
Zacatecas,  to  the  north  of  the  city  of  Mexico,  in 
February.  It  had  been  already  occupied  by  his 
partisans,  and  we  are  told  that  he  received  a  great 
ovation.  But  it  was  far  from  being  the  case  that  all 
was  over  except  the  shouting.  The  Government 
troops  were  better  armed  and  better  organised  than 
their  opponents.  They  scattered  the  insurgents 
easily  enough  in  the  open  field,  winning  "  decisive  " 
victories  at  Cerro  de  la  Bufa,  reoccupying  Zacatecas, 
and  gaining  such  successes  as  every  Mexican  Govern- 
ment claims  to  win  till  it  crumbles.  Diaz,  who  was 
not  present  at  any  of  these  engagements,  marched 
with  a  body  of  cavalry  on  Mexico  city  itself,  in  the 
hope  of  being  received  by  a  popular  revolt.  But 
townsmen  and  garrison  refused  to  move,  and  big  towns 
cannot  be  ,taken  by  columns  of  cavalry  except  with 
their  own  consent.  He  had  to  retire  to  the  State  of 
Jalisco  and  wander  round  the  central  regions  still 
held  by  Juarez.  The  rising  had  not  upset  the 
Government,  but  whole  States  were  out  of  hand, 
particularly  in  the  north,  where  Sinoloa  and  Chihua- 
hua were  hostile,  and  there  were  Porfiristas  every- 
where in  sierra  and  plain.     A  small  defeat  in  the  field 


148  DIAZ 

would  in  all  likelihood  have  brought  the  Government 
down.  The  decision  came  in  another  way.  Juarez 
died  suddenly  on  July  18.  The  disappearance  of  the 
old  leader  in  a  great  internal  conflict  and  a  struggle  for 
independence  appealed  to  popular  emotion.  Sunt 
lachrymce  rerum,  even  in  Mexico.  All  parties  were 
awed  for  a  moment,  and  combined  to  give  him  "  a 
first-class  funeral."  The  kindly  regard  for  the 
memory  of  an  old  foe  which  Swift  grimly  noted  in 
Harley  and  St.  John  when  they  were  talking  of 
Godolphin,  who  was  dead  and  could  now  do  them  no 
harm,  is  a  universal  human  sentiment.  The  political 
world  of  Mexico  gave  Juarez  his  first-class  funeral, 
and  voted  him  "  well  deserving  of  his  country  in  the 
heroic  degree."     Then  it  went  on  as  before. 

The  removal  of  one  of  the  three  competitors  for 
power  could  make  no  change  in  the  real  condition  of 
the  country.  Yet  it  simplified  the  situation  and 
allowed  of  an  interval  of  at  least  relative  peace. 
Lerdo  became  interim  President  by  right  of  his  place 
as  President  of  the  Supreme  Court.  By  retaining  the 
Ministers  of  Juarez,  by  keeping  his  own  counsel,  by 
hinting  hopes  to  his  own  party,  by  offering  amnesty 
on  easy  terms,  and  buying  off  individual  leaders  he 
kept  Juaristas  and  Lerdists  together,  and  he  divided 
the  Porfiristas.  Diaz  held  out  for  a  time,  but  by 
October  he  had  to  recognise  that  he  would  only  lose 
by  continuing  in  arms.  Lerdo  refused  to  make  any 
further  concessions  in  answer  to  letters  Diaz  wrote 
on  August  I  and  September  23.  In  these  documents 
Don  Porfirio  only  proved,  I  fear,  that  after  all  he  too 
was  in  the  year  1872  a  Mexican  politician.  The  one 
substantial  word  which  stands  in  the  midst  of  a  flow 
of  verbiage  was  the  demand  that  the  amnesty  should 


THE   FIGHT  FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY    149 

be  amended  in  his  favour.  The  tenth  Article  of  that 
document  declared  that  officers  of  the  army  who  had 
taken  part  in  the  late  rising  were  to  lose  rank  and  pay, 
though  they  were  not  to  be  otherwise  punished.  And 
this  is  the  appropriate  place  to  note  that,  in  spite  of 
Lerdo's  firm  refusal  at  the  moment,  the  rank  and  pay 
were  restored  before  long.  We  may  assume  that 
other  communications  of  a  private  character  took 
place,  but  were  not  put  on  record.  These  compro- 
mises are  unavoidable  in  parliamentary  life,  even  when 
it  is  conducted  by  "  plans  "  "  pronunciamientos,"  and 
war  cries.  If  the  great  Commoner  was  forced  to  suffer 
the  intrigues  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  it  is  no  less 
true  that  the  Duke  could  not  have  intrigued  and 
corrupted  during  a  certain  set  of  years  without  the 
tacit  assistance  of  the  great  Commoner.  All  the 
other  parts  of  Diaz's  two  letters  are  concerned  with 
the  usual  fine  sentiments  about  freedom  of  election  and 
a  warning  that  unless  Government  altered  its  ways 
the  arrangement  now  in  course  of  being  made  would 
turn  out  to  be  but  a  temporary  truce.  The  prediction 
was  a  safe  one,  even  if  it  had  not  been  uttered  by  a 
man  who  was  in  a  position  to  fulfil  his  own  prophecy. 
For  the  moment  the  way  to  the  Presidency  was 
closed.  Diaz  returned  to  Oaxaca.  His  ranch.  La 
Noria,  had  been  burnt  down  by  the  soldiers  of  Juarez 
during  the  late  troubles,  and  he  now  established 
himself  at  La  Candelaria.  For  three  years  or  so  he 
again  applied  himself  to  the  cultivation  of  the  sugar- 
cane, but  this  time  he  added  a  manufacture  of  chairs 
to  his  agricultural  industry.  The  cultivation  of  the 
sugar-cane  allows  of  long,  quiet  intervals  between  the 
planting  and  the  reaping.  But  he  certainly  did  not 
limit    himself    to    growing    sugar-cane    and    making 


ISO  DIAZ 

chairs.  He  was  now  the  head  of  a  powerful  connection, 
defeated,  even  scattered,  for  the  moment,  but  always 
capable  of  reuniting  if  its  members  found  that  their 
ambitions  were  not  satisfied.  Don  Porfirio,  who  was 
a  good  judge  of  men,  must  have  known  enough  of 
Lerdo  to  feel  sure  that  he  had  only  to  wait  patiently 
for  an  opportunity  which  would  not  fail  to  come. 

Don  Sebastian  Lerdo  appears ,  from  what  he  did 
and  what  we  are  told  of  him,  to  have  belonged  to  a 
type  of  man  known  in  all  countries,  and  certainly  not 
less  common  among  Spanish-speaking  politicians  than 
elsewhere.  There  was  in  him  a  combination  of 
dignity,  not  to  say  gravity,  of  outward  bearing  with 
inward  arrogance,  and  of  frivolity  of  judgment,  which 
is  fatal.  Mr.  H.  H.  Bancroft,  in  his  "  History  of 
Mexico,"  gives  it  as  his  belief  that  Don  Sebastian  had 
a  love  of  mystifying  the  people  about  him.  Now  few 
of  those  who  indulge  in  this  form  of  humour  are  found 
to  be  able  to  keep  their  enjoyment  of  the  joke  to 
themselves.  They  triumph,  and  indeed  it  is  not 
always  possible  to  hide  the  mystification  from  the 
victim,  and  it  is  especially  hard  when  the  point  of  the 
jest  lies  in  depriving  him  of  a  place  or  keeping  him  out 
of  one.  The  sufferer  is  forced  to  recognise  that  he  has 
been  made  to  look  like  a  fool.  There  is  no  more 
effectual  way  of  gaining  enemies  than  to  indulge  in 
these  feats  of  ingenuity.  The  Duke  of  Wellington, 
on  one  of  the  rare  occasions  on  which  he  con- 
fessed to  have  made  a  mistake,  said  that  it  lay  in 
having  proved  another  gentleman  to  be  a  fool,  for 
nobody  likes  to  be  thought  a  fool.  On  one  occasion 
Lerdo  mystified  the  whole  population  of  the  city  of 
Mexico  by  holding  a  premature  ceremony  of  inaugura- 
tion of  the  Veracruz;  railway,  with  a  great  flourish  of 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY    151 

trumpets.  The  arrogance  of  the  man,  and  the 
frivolity,  too,  came  out  when  he  made  a  public 
declaration  of  his  beHef  that  he  owed  his  place  to 
constitutional  right  and  was  not  bound  to  consider 
anybody.  He  was  technically  right,  since  he  had 
succeeded  Juarez  by  virtue  of  his  office  as  President 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  but  he  was  in  that  place 
because  he  was  a  party  leader.  It  was  not  wise  to  tell 
his  followers  that  he  had  outgrown  the  need  of  their 
support.  And  then,  too,  he  had  drawn  over  many 
of  the  Porfiristas  by  giving  them  to  understand  that 
he  would  choose  some  of  his  Ministers  from  among 
them.  Yet  he  kept  them  at  arm's  length.  And  he 
did  a  still  less  intelligible  thing.  He  treated  his  own 
party  as  a  negligible  quantity,  and  chose  his  Ministers 
entirely  among  the  Juaristas.  The  Lerdistas  were 
naturally  angry.  He  was  accused  of  corruption  and 
of  underhand  dealings  for  his  own  advantage  with  the 
foreign  capitalists  who  were  now  beginning  to  lay  the 
Mexican  railways,  as  also  of  sacrificing  the  interests 
of  Mexico  to  British  creditors.  But  these  accusations 
were  probably  the  result  rather  than  the  cause  of  his 
unpopularity.  Withal  he  might  have  completed  his 
term  of  office  in  peace  if  he  had  not  sought  his 
re-election  in  the  usual  way,  which  it  would  be  unneces- 
sary as  well  as  tiresome  to  repeat.  The  time  was  ripe 
and  Don  Porfirio  came  out  of  his  retirement  to 
conduct  another  constitutional  campaign. 

And  now  we  have  come  to  the  last  "  Plan,"  and  as 
it  really  did  produce  some  definite  and  long-lived 
consequences,  it  is  worth  while  to  look  at  the  thing 
with  some  attention.  It  was  in  all  ways  typical  of  the 
political  world  of  Spanish  America,  in  its  inception, 
its  development,  and  its  result.     Lerdo  did  not  forget 


152  DIAZ 

the  part  he  had  played  to  Juarez,  and  thought  it  wise 
to  take  his  precautions  against  any  possible  display 
of  independence  by  the  present  holder  of  the  post  of 
President  of  the  Supreme  Court,  Don  Jose  Maria 
Iglesias.  Don  Jose  had  been  a  steady  supporter  of 
Juarez  and  had  borne  the  heat  of  the  day  during  the 
Imperial  interlude.  He  was  an  important  man  in 
his  party,  and  Don  Sebastian  no  doubt  looked  upon 
him  as  very  capable  of  nursing  ambitious  views  on 
the  national  Presidency,  to  which,  as  we  have  just 
seen,  the  Presidency  of  the  Supreme  Court  had  thrice 
served  as  a  stepping-stone.  One  of  the  most  valued 
and  honourable  functions  of  the  court  was  to  decide 
on  the  legality  of  the  election  of  a  national  President 
in  case  any  dispute  did  arise.  Now,  as  Don  Sebastian 
was  quite  resolved  to  be  elected  and  to  use  all  means 
to  that  end,  it  followed  that  he  could  not  lay  himself 
open  to  the  risk  of  seeing  his  return  quashed  for 
irregularity.  The  probability  that  this  judgment 
would  be  given  \vas  strong,  for  not  only  was  Don 
Sebastian  resolved  to  be  national  President  regardless 
of  law,  but  as  the  President  of  the  Supreme  Court  was 
interim  President  of  the  Republic  sede  vacante^  it  was 
obvious  that  in  the  act  of  declaring  the  return  of 
another  to  be  irregular  Don  Jose  would  seat  himself 
in  the  Presidential  chair.  To  get  rid  of  Sefior  Iglesias 
and  put  a  person  more  likely  to  prove  compliant  in 
his  place  would  at  the  first  blush  appear  to  have  been 
the  simple  course.  But  it  was  not  simple.  The 
summary  dismissal  of  Don  Jose  Maria  would  have 
offended  his  friends,  and  would  have  given  the 
Porfiristas,  whose  opposition  was  certain,  good  ground 
for  asserting  that  the  court  had  been  packed  and 
so  for  disregarding  its  judgment.     Nor  was  it  at  all 


THE    FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     153 

sure  that  anyone  else  who  might  be  put  in  his  place 
would  not  be  tempted  to  display  a  manly  and  pro- 
fitable regard  for  the  majesty  of  the  law. 

Mere  dismissal  was  therefore  not  to  be  thought  of. 
Lerdo  believed  that  he  had  found  a  more  excellent 
way.  He  made  a  new  rule  with  the  help  of  his  docile 
Congress,  and  it  was  that  the  right  of  examining  into 
the  legality  of  elections  ought  on  all  sound  principles 
to  belong  to  the  electoral  college  which  directed  the 
taking  of  the  poll.  Of  course  Don  Jose  protested 
against  that  new  little  law  of  the  President's,  declared 
it  unconstitutional,  and  offered  his  resignation.  To 
let  him  go  in  these  circumstances  would  have  been 
equivalent  to  dismissal.  So  Lerdo  refused  to  accept 
his  resignation.  A  stormy  interview  followed.  Don 
Jose  protested  that  the  law  was  no  law,  but  he  kept 
his  place.  It  was  obvious  that  his  presence  on  the 
bench  must  be  dangerous  to  Lerdo,  for  in  the  certain 
event  of  a  denial  of  the  legality  of  the  election  the 
President  of  the  Supreme  Court  would  insist  on  main- 
taining that  he  had  jurisdiction.  Lerdo  must  have 
considered  this  the  lesser  danger  of  the  two.  He  left 
Iglesias  in  possession  of  his  place  and  went  on  his  own 
way,  relying  on  being  able  to  enforce  his  will  when  the 
time  should  come.  What  Iglesias  might  do  would 
depend  on  what  the  Porfiristas  could  do.  If  they 
were  beaten  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  dispose  of  him. 

The  election  was  treated  as  the  farce  which  it  was 
by  Diaz  and  his  party.  He  left  his  farm.  La  Cande- 
laria,  in  December,  1875,  to  open  the  campaign.  On 
this  occasion  the  course  first  adopted  differed  from  that 
followed  three  years  before.  Diaz  left  his  supporter, 
Don  Fidencio  Hernandez,  to  begin  the  rising  in 
Oaxaca.     He    took    ship    in    the    British    steamship 


1 54  DIAZ 

Corsica  with  several  friends,  and  went  to  Brownsville, 
in  Texas,  just  opposite  the  Mexican  port  Matamoros, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Rio  Grande,  which  is  here  the 
border  line  between  the  two  republics.  His  purpose 
was  to  cross  the  river  and  take  command  in  the  field 
at  the  opportune  moment.  In  the  meantime  he 
directed  operations  from  safe  headquarters. 

The  first  move  was  made  in  Oaxaca  with  complete 
success.  Don  Fidencio  Hernandez  found  no  difficulty 
in  scattering  the  small  body  of  Federal  troops  which 
tried  to  oppose  him  and  the  ill-armed  "  Indiada  "  he 
led.  The  town  of  Oaxaca  was  easily  taken.  Govern- 
ment arms  and  rifles  seized,  while  the  Government 
troops  were  incorporated  in  the  revolutionary  army. 
Hernandez  observed  the  traditional  forms  by  issuing 
the  regulation  plan  at  Taxtupec.  As  it  was  modified 
by  Diaz  himself  later,  and  produced  on  a  second 
occasion  as  the  Plan  of  Palo  Blanco,  no  more  need  be 
done  now  than  just  note  its  appearance  and  name. 
The  happy  beginning  in  Oaxaca  was  well  followed 
up.  In  a  very  short  time  the  "  banner  of  revolt  " 
was  being  raised  in  all  the  four  quarters  of  Mexico. 
As  some  troops  adhered  to  Lerdo,  and  as  General 
Latorre,  who  had  been  loyal  to  Juarez,  was  also  true 
to  him,  some  smart  fighting  in  the  Mexican  way  took 
place.  Diaz  himself  crossed  the  frontier  on  March  22. 
Don  Porfirio  found  that  the  Plan  of  Taxtupec  was  not 
wholly  acceptable  to  the  anti-Lerdinas.  It  provided 
for  much  they  were  in  arms  to  secure,  the  removal  of 
Lerdo  being  the  essential  point  of  the  whole.  But  the 
Plan  also  provided  that  Don  Porfirio  should  be  General 
of  the  Revolutionary  Army  and  that  the  right  to  act 
as  Government  should  be  given  to  him.  Now  the 
Northern  leaders  were  not  disposed  to  accept  a  chief 


THE   FIGHT  FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     155 

named  for  them  by  Oaxaca.  Diaz  saw  the  necessity 
for  a  little  judicious  face-saving  and  modified  the 
wording  slightly.  The  preamble,  which  recited  the 
sins  of  Lerdo,  needed  no  alteration.  The  Plan  as 
finally  settled  provided  that  the  Constitution  of  1857, 
with  the  amending  Acts  of  1873  and  1874,  should  be 
"  the  supreme  law  of  the  RepubHc."  That  the  ineligi- 
bility of  an  outgoing  President  should  also  be  a  supreme 
law  till  such  time  as  it  was  made  a  constitutional 
reform.  That  Lerdo  and  all  his  men  were  naught. 
That  governors  of  States  who  accepted  the  Plan  were 
to  be  kept  in  office.  Those  who  did  not  were  to  be 
removed  and  replaced  by  nominees  of  the  General-in- 
Chief  of  the  Revolutionary  Army.  Another  election 
for  President  was  to  be  held  within  two  months  of  the 
occupation  of  the  capital  by  the  said  Revolutionary 
Army.  That  the  President  of  the  Supreme  Court  was 
to  be  interim  President  of  the  Republic  (this  was  the 
face-saving  clause)  provided  that  he  accepted  this 
Plan  in  all  its  parts  (this  was  the  condition  which  ren- 
dered the  face-saving  clause  quite  harmless).  That  in 
case  of  his  refusal  the  General-in-Chief  was  to  be  in- 
vested with  executive  power.  That  the  next  Congress 
was  to  set  about  the  work  of  constitutional  reform 
and  to  provide  guarantees  for  the  independence  of 
municipalities.  That  all  generals  and  oflficers  who 
accepted  this  Plan — no  limit  of  time  being  fixed  for 
acceptance — were  to  be  maintained  in  the  possession 
of  their  rank  and  emoluments. 

The  really  important  parts  of  the  Plan  of  Palo 
Blanco  were  the  clauses  which  put  the  President  of 
the  Supreme  Court  "  between  the  sword  and  the  wall," 
and  the  last.  If  Iglesias  accepted  the  whole  Plan  he 
put  himself  in  the  hands  of  the  General  of  the  Revo- 


iS6  DIAZ 

lutionary  Army,  who  would  take  care  that  he  should 
not  be  elected  definitive  President  for  the  full  term  of 
four  years.  But  this  was  not  Don  Jose  Maria's 
reading  of  the  constitutional  law  of  Mexico.  His 
view  was  that  when  the  President  of  the  Supreme 
Court  became  interim  President  of  the  Republic,  sede 
vacante^  he  alone  was  to  have  power  to  replace 
governors  or  do  whatever  else  was  necessary  to  make 
his  own  election  sure.  He  pointed  to  the  recent 
precedents  of  Juarez  and  Lerdo,  and  stood  on  constitu- 
tional practice  with  all  the  tenacity  of  the  strictest 
sect  of  the  Pharisees. 

For  a  time  he  was  able  to  give  substantial  trouble  to 
Diaz.  He  left  the  capital  and  entered  into  negotia- 
tions with  persons  of  influence.  His  claim  was  that 
from  the  end  of  November,  1875,  when  the  term  for 
which  Lerdo  had  been  elected  closed,  he  was  interim 
President  of  Mexico,  and  government  was  to  be  con- 
ducted in  his  name.  He  found  a  good  deal  of  support 
in  the  North.  It  was  the  trouble  given  him  by 
Iglesias  rather  than  a  small  check  at  the  hand  of 
Lerdo's  troops  at  Ixcamula  which  decided  Diaz  to 
return  to  the  South  in  June.  He  had  made  good  pro- 
gress, had  taken  Matamoros,  had  been  joined  by 
partisans,  and  had  collected  an  army  about  him.  His 
revised  plan  of  campaign  was  to  go  himself  to  New 
Orleans  and  from  thence  by  sea  to  Veracruz,  then 
put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Oaxacan  forces.  In 
the  meantime  General  Gonzalez,  on  whom  also  he 
could  rely,  was  to  lead  the  revolutionary  soldiers  who 
adhered  to  Don  Porfirio  across  country  to  the  hill 
country  of  Puebla.  Here  the  two  were  to  meet  and 
advance  on  Mexico. 

And  now  we  have  to  leave  high  matters  of  politics 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE   PRESIDENCY    157 

and  strategy  and  return  for  a  last  dip  into  the  world 
of  Dumas  and  Mayne  Reid.  The  coming  President  of 
Mexico,  a  man  of  forty-five,  head  of  a  party  and  an 
army,  had  to  go  through  an  adventure  such  as  would 
become  the  hero  of  a  boy's  book.  Diaz  recrossed  the 
frontier  of  the  United  States  and  went  to  New 
Orleans.  There  he  took  passage  for  Veracruz  in  the 
coasting  steamer  City  of  Habana  in  the  character  of  a 
Cuban  doctor.  The  steamer  put  into  Matamoros  to 
pick  up  passengers  and  cargo — that  is  to  say,  she  lay 
four  miles  off  that  indifferent  port  till  they  were 
brought  to  her  in  lighters.  When  the  passengers 
came  aboard  they  turned  out  to  be  Lerdist  soldiers 
who  had  surrendered  to  Diaz  not  long  before,  had 
been  released  by  him,  and  knew  him  by  sight.  He 
was  of  course  recognised  at  once,  and  knew  he  was. 
So  long  as  he  remained  in  the  City  of  Habana  he  was 
in  no  danger,  but  there  was  every  probability  that  he 
would  be  arrested  when  he  reached  Veracruz.  In 
this  fix  he  had  recourse  to  a  device  which  might  per- 
haps have  suggested  itself  at  one  time  of  his  life  to 
Bismarck,  but  which  we  can  by  no  effort  of  fancy 
make  credible  in  the  cases  of  Cavour,  Thiers,  or  Mr. 
Gladstone.  He  took  to  the  water  and  made  a 
determined  effort  to  swim  the  whole  four  miles  to  the 
shore.  Now  Diaz  could  swim,  but  a  man  must  be  an 
uncommonly  strong  swimmer  and  in  good  practice  to 
be  able  to  swim  four  miles.  The  gallant  attempt  to 
reach  his  friends  in  Matamoros  went  indeed  near  to 
ending  in  a  disaster.  He  began  to  become  exhausted. 
A  boat  had  to  be  sent  from  the  ship  to  pick  him  up. 
The  captain  of  the  City  of  Habana  was  no  doubt  a 
humane  man,  but  he  had  a  strong  motive  for  not 
allowing  Don  Porfirio  to  be  drowned.     Spanish  and 


IS8  DIAZ 

Spanish-American  port  authorities  have  a  lively- 
passion  for  enforcing  quarantine  and  for  levying  fines. 
If  the  number  of  passengers  and  crew  actually  on 
board  had  not  coincided  exactly  with  the  list  made  at 
Matamoros  the  steamer  would  pretty  certainly  have 
been  detained  and  a  fine  levied.^ 

When  Don  Porfirio  was  back  in  the  steamer  he  was 
again  in  danger.  But  luck  or  good  management 
came  to  his  assistance.  The  purser  of  the  steamer 
proved  a  friend  in  need.  He  contrived  to  conceal  the 
future  President  in  his  cabin — in  a  sofa  seat,  it  is  said, 
a  very  trying  place  to  hide  in  during  June  or  July, 
and  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  At  some  period  in  the 
course  of  this  adventure  a  bribe  passed  into  the  hands 
of  somebody,  but  the  truth  is  now  in  all  probability- 
past  recovery,  and  the  details  of  the  story  as  it  is 
commonly  told  are  somewhat  hard  to  work  out  by- 
anyone  who  knows  the  routine  of  a  passenger  ship  and 
a  seaport.^  The  substantial  fact  is  alone  important, 
and  it  is  that  Diaz  was  helped  to  escape  at  Veracruz 
by  the  officers,  or  an  officer,  of  the  City  of  Habana 

^  The  ways  of  Spanish-speaking  officialdom  are  not  ill-illustrated  by  this 
little  incident  which  came  under  my  own  observation.  A  British  ship  had 
entered  the  port  of  Barcelona.  The  local  health  officers  were  taking  the 
number  of  her  crew  to  see  that  it  coincided  with  the  list.  While  the  call  was 
being  taken  the  captain,  who  was  on  the  bridge,  had  occasion  to  give  an 
order  to  the  deck.  He  bent  over  the  rail  of  the  bridge,  taking  off  the  sun 
helmet  he  wore  and  holding  it  out  at  arm's  length  behind  the  back  of  the 
mate,  who  was  standing  beside  him.  The  health  officer  counted  in  the  sun 
helmet  and  accused  the  captain  of  having  one  more  on  board  than  he 
acknowledged  in  the  list.  This  was  of  course  an  excuse  for  a  fine.  When 
the  facts  were  explained  the  officials  accused  the  skipper  of  playing  a 
practical  joke  on  them,  and  he  was  fined  for  disrespect  to  the  authorities. 
The  British  skipper,  it  is  true,  does  play  jokes  of  a  very  irritating  character 
on  "  the  authorities."  One  of  them  who  was  capable  of  this  and  greater 
things,  being  pestered  just  when  he  was  about  to  leave  by  two  customs- 
house  officers  who  were  prowling  in  search  of  an  excuse  to  fine  or  to  extort 
a  bribe,  inveigled  them  into  his  cabin,  gave  them  beer,  locked  them  in,  got 
under  way,  and  carried  them  with  him  to  his  next  port,  which  was  on  the 
coast  of  Africa. 

2  CJ.  "  Porfirio  Diaz,"  by  Mrs.  Tweedie,  pp.  253—255. 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY      159 

disguised  as  a  sailor.  And  then  the  other  fact  that 
leaders  of  great  parties  have  to  go  through  these 
adventures  in  Spanish-American  States  tells  us  much 
of  the  level  at  which  those  communities  stand. 

In  Veracruz  he  had  friends,  not  only  in  politics,  but 
in  business,  and  he  was  personally  liked  by  them  for 
fair  dealing.  He  had,  as  we  know,  a  varied  experience 
in  escapes,  and  was  moreover  well  acquainted  with  the 
country  he  had  to  cross.  Between  what  help  he  found 
and  his  own  resources,  which  must  have  included 
some  money,  he  succeeded  in  reaching  Oaxaca  in  July. 
Meanwhile  Gonzalez  was  working  South,  and  had 
reached  the  Tlascala  hill  country  between  Mexico  city 
and  Veracruz,  while  Diaz  was  getting  ready  to 
advance  from  Oaxaca.  Lerdo's  danger  was  steadily 
increasing.  Iglesias  was  threatening  him  from  the 
North  and  the  Porfiristas  were  gathering  force  in  the 
South.  Gonzalez  was  between  him  and  Veracruz  and 
had  cut  the  new  railway  at  three  places.  Yet  events 
did  not  move  fast.  In  the  climate  of  Mexico  it  is  the 
heat  of  summer  rather  than  the  cold  of  winter  which 
sends  armies  into  quarters.  October  was  well  ad- 
vanced before  Diaz  had  come  sufficiently  forward  to 
be  in  a  position  to  effect  his  junction  with  Gonzalez 
and  other  friends  who  were  in  the  mountain  country 
of  the  State  of  Puebla.  Matters  had  now  come  to  the 
point  when  a  defeat  in  the  field  would  mean  the  total 
ruin  of  Lerdo,  while  a  victory  might,  and  in  all 
probability  would,  be  of  no  more  than  temporary  use 
to  him.     The  disaster  came  on  November  16. 

General  Alatorre,  with  the  Lerdist  forces,  had  his 
headquarters  at  Teotitlan.  This  town  lies  about  half- 
way between  Oaxaca  on  the  South,  from  which  Diaz 
was  advancing,  and  the  mountains  east  of  Puebla, 


i6o  DIAZ 

where  Gonzalez  and  other  Porfirista  leaders  gathered 
to  the  North.     These  last  had  just  been  reinforced  by 
General  Tolentino,  who  with  his  men  deserted  the  cause 
of  Lerdo.     Alatorre  had  the  advantage  of  operating 
from  the  centre  to  the  circumference,  and  with  it  the 
risk  that  he  might  be  simultaneously  attacked  on 
both  sides.     It  was  the  worst,  and  not  the  best  of  his 
position  which  was  to  be  his  lot.     He  tried  to  intercept 
Diaz  and  get  the  chance  to  beat  his  enemies  in  detail. 
But  Don  Porfirio's  little  force  of  some  4,000  men  was 
not  hampered  by  much  baggage  or  train,  and  he  had 
campaigned  all  over  the  country  for  years.     It  was 
not  very  difficult  for  him  to  turn  Alatorre's  position 
and  push  for  the  hills  to  the  North,  and  so  he  did. 
Alatorre  followed,  and  on  the  evening  of  November  1 5 
caught  him  up.     But  Diaz  could  now  venture  to  stand, 
for  his  friends  were  near.     He  took  up  his  position  at 
Tecoac,  north  of  Huamantla.     It  was  too  late  to  begin 
a  battle  on  the  evening  of  the  15  th,  and  during  the 
night  he  was  joined  by  some  of  his  friends  from  the 
Sierras.     Gonzalez,  with  the  main  force,  was  still  at 
some  distance,  but  was  advancing.     The  battle  of 
Tecoac,  the  crowning  mercy  of  the  war,  is  said  to  have 
been  very  sanguinary — and  indeed  it  must  have  been 
if  Alatorre  lost,  as  he  said  he  did,  1,900  killed  and  800 
wounded.     Such  a  proportion  of  killed  to  wounded 
may  be  said  to  be  unknown  to  European  armies.     But 
little  faith  is  due  to  Mexican  statements  of  numbers. 
Don  Porfirio  was  hard  pressed,  and  in  some  danger  of 
being    driven    from    his    position,    when    Gonzalez 
suddenly  intervened,  falling  on  Alatorre's  right  flank. 
The  rout  of  the  Lerdists  was  complete.     Alatorre,  it 
is  said,  was  utterly  surprised  by  the  onset  of  Gonzalez, 
for  he  had  supposed  that  the  troops  he  saw  approach- 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     i6i 

ing  were  reinforcements  which  he  expected  to  receive. 
Tecoac  was  therefore  a  Httle  battle  of  Waterloo,  in 
which  Diaz  was  Wellington,  Gonzalez  was  Bliicher, 
Alatorre  was  Napoleon,  and  the  supposed  reinforce- 
ments may  stand  for  Grouchy.  The  usual  conse- 
quences of  a  Mexican  victory  followed  in  a  measure. 
Three  thousand  prisoners  passed  over  to  the  victorious 
side,  but  Diaz  did  not  shoot  the  officers  he  took. 

As  Lerdo's  whole  strength  lay  in  the  troops  who  still 
stood  by  him,  the  game  was  up  after  Tecoac.  He 
showed  that  he  realised  the  facts,  for  on  November  20, 
four  days  after  the  battle,  he  fled  from  the  capital, 
taking  the  till  with  him  :  $200,000  taken  from  the 
treasury  and  the  Montepio  (the  state  pawnbroking 
establishment)  were  loaded  in  the  wagons  which  he 
took  to  the  coast  under  protection  of  an  escort  of 
1,000  cavalry.  Accompanied  by  some  of  the  more 
hopelessly  compromised  of  his  friends,  he  fled  to  the 
Pacific  coast,  took  ship,  and  found  a  refuge  in  the 
United  States. 

His  partisans  could  hardly  be  expected  to  go  on 
fighting  when  he  had  fled,  and,  indeed,  they  lost  no 
time  in  coming  over  to  the  victorious  side.  And  now 
Diaz  reaped  the  first  benefits  of  the  final  clause  of  the 
Plan  of  Palo  Blanco.  It  provided,  we  may  remember, 
that  all  generals  and  officers^  who  should  accept  the 
Plan  were  to  retain  pay  and  rank.  The  adherents  of 
the  eleventh  hour  were  to  be  even  as  those  of  the  first. 
The  object  of  Don  Porfirio  was  to  unite  all  the  military 
factions  under  himself,  and  to  drive  nobody  to 
desperation.     When  the  Lerdist  officers  were  abso- 

^  The  Spanish  formula  is  "  generales,  cabos,  y  oficiales  " — that  is  to  say, 
generals,  commissioned  officers,  and  non-commissioned  officers.  The 
phrase  ought  not  to  be  translated  by  "  generals,  chiefs,  and  officers,"  as  it 
sometimes  is. 


1 62  DIAZ 

lutely  running  in  their  haste  to  make  their  junction 
with  him  in  time  there  was  nothing  to  stay  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  capital.     He  entered  it  on  November  23. 

With  Don  Sebastian  in  flight  and  his  miHtary  forces 
hurrying  to  join  the  conqueror,  only  Don  Jose  M. 
Iglesias  remained  to  be  disposed  of.  During  the 
advance  of  Diaz  from  the  South  Don  Jose  had  been 
in  active  correspondence  with  him,  and,  indeed, 
letters  continued  to  be  exchanged  between  them,  and 
friends  were  busy  trying  to  bring  them  together  till 
November  27,  three  days  after  the  occupation  of  the 
capital.  There  was,  and  could  be,  no  novelty  in  the 
discussion.  Diaz  was  prepared  to  recognise  Iglesias 
as  interim  President  till  a  new  election  could  be  held 
if  he  would  accept  the  Plan  of  Tuxtupec — that  is  to 
say,  be  content  with  holding  a  purely  honorific  place 
for  a  time,  and  perhaps  retaining  his  position  as 
President  of  the  Supreme  Court.  Don  Jose  was 
resolute  to  be  interim  President — without  restrictions 
— to  "  make  "  his  own  election  as  President  of  the 
Republic.  He  was  known  to  intend  to  keep  the 
revolutionists  of  Tuxtupec  at  a  safe  distance  from  oflice. 
As  a  lawyer  he  would  have  no  liking  for  revolutionary 
generals.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  pedant  lawyer 
mind  at  all  times  and  everywhere,  and  particularly 
characteristic  of  the  Spanish  slavery  to  mere  sonorous 
words,  that  Don  Jose  Maria  does  really  seem  to  have 
believed  that  he  could  put  a  hook  in  the  nose  of 
Leviathan  with  his  windy  constitutional  theories  and 
mere  phrases.  He  seems  never  to  have  doubted  that 
nothing  save  a  hopeless  perversity  could  prevent  the 
general  who  had  upset  Lerdo  from  immediately  giving 
up  all  he  had  fought  for,  and  going  meekly  back  to 
Candelaria,  when  he  was  told  to  respect  the  august 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     163 

dignity  of  the  President  of  the  Supreme  Court.  The 
patent  facts  that  in  such  a  country  as  Mexico  the 
only  possible  ruler  was  a  soldier,  that  Diaz  could  be 
beaten  only  by  some  other  fighting  man,  and  that 
even  if  a  general  from  the  North  got  the  better  of 
him  in  the  name  of  Iglesias  the  real  master  would  be 
that  general,  and  not  Don  Jose  Maria,  produced  no 
impression  on  the  legal-minded  man.  To  him  facts 
were  naught,  and  words  were  the  only  realities. 
There  was  nothing  to  be  done  with  him  but  to  keep 
him  in  play  till  the  coast  was  clear  of  Lerdo,  then 
clap  your  hat  on,  exclaim  there  must  be  an  end  of 
this,  and  call  in  Harrison's  Regiment  of  Musketeers. 
And  this  is  precisely  the  course  which  Porfirio  Diaz 
followed. 

For  a  short  time  Mexico  was  in  the  curious  position 
of  possessing  two  provisional  Presidents.  Don  Por- 
firio took  the  government  provisionally  in  hand  when 
he  occupied  the  capital.  Iglesias  in  the  North 
protested  that  he  alone  was  provisional  or  interim 
President,  and  he  appeared  to  be  collecting  a  con- 
siderable force.  Queretaro,  San  Luis,  Potosi,  Zacatecas, 
and  Aquasculientes  proclaimed  for  him.  The  general 
who  commanded  in  Jalisco  put  himself  and  his 
soldiers  at  the  orders  of  Don  Jose.  The  Lerdists  in 
the  North  seemed  to  be  every  whit  as  ready  to  support 
him  as  those  of  the  South  were  to  adhere  to  Diaz. 
Each  chief  formed  a  Cabinet,  and  if  appearances  had 
corresponded  to  realities,  there  would  have  been 
every  prospect  of  a  war  between  North  and  South  in 
Mexico.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  no  relation 
between  the  appearances  and  the  realities.  Diaz  was 
master  of  the  capital  and  of  the  communications  with 
Veracruz,  as  well  as  of  the  South.     He  had  possession 


i64  DIAZ     . 

of  the  richest  parts  of  the  territory  of  the  Republic, 
and  he  controlled  the  chief  source  of  its  revenue — the 
custom  duty  levied  at  Veracruz.  The  northern 
provinces,  which  Iglesias  seemed  to  dominate,  form 
the  largest  part  of  Mexico,  but  they  are  the  poorest 
and  the  least  inhabited.  Iglesias's  treasury  was 
empty,  and  there  was  no  prospect  that  it  would  be 
filled.  Diaz  was  in  possession  of  whatever  Lerdo 
had  left  behind,  and  he  had  the  means  of  getting  more. 
His  character  for  moderation  and  probity  stood  him 
in  good  stead.  All  classes  could  remember  how  careful 
he  had  been  to  protect  property  and  keep  the  peace  in 
1867.  The  classes  which  could  dispose  of  money  were 
not  averse  to  trusting  him.  And  then,  too,  the  hopes 
of  all  the  peaceful  elements  in  the  country  were 
drawn  to  him  because  he  was  the  man  least  likely  to 
divide  the  country  and  most  likely  to  make  quiet 
possible  in  the  future.  It  was  true  that  he  was  a 
revolutionary  general  who  had  plunged  the  nation 
into  another  spasm  of  strife,  but  Lerdo  was  so 
thoroughly  unpopular  that  few  were  disposed  to  blame 
the  Porfiristas  for  getting  rid  of  him.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  was  known  that  Iglesias  wished  to  suppress 
the  Porfiristas  entirely  by  excluding  them  from  office, 
not  only  in  the  Federal  Administration,  but  in 
their  own  States — that  is  to  say,  he  was  supposed  to 
intend  to  take  the  very  course  which  was  certain  to 
make  trouble  chronic. 

These  things  being  thus,  it  followed  that  Iglesias 
could  have  no  support  except  from  the  generals  and 
politicians  in  the  worst  sense  of  the  word  who  were  for 
the  time  being  collected  about  him.  And  where  were 
the  causes  for  which  they  could  be  expected  to  go  on 
fighting  ?     No  racial  distinction  marked  the  North 


THE   FIGHTIJFOR   THE    PRESIDENCY     165 

off  from  the  South ;  and  as  for  questions  of  principle 
to  be  fought  over,  there  was  only  one,  and  it  was  as 
ill-calculated  to  nerve  men  to  effort  or  self-sacrifice 
as  could  well  be  imagined.  The  Northern  men  were 
asked  to  go  on  fighting  in  order  to  give  effect  to  Don 
Jose  Maria's  interpretation  of  the  constitutional 
rights  of  the  President  of  the  Supreme  Court.  It 
certainly  was  not  enough. 

Therefore,  though  Iglesias  was  supposed  to  have  the 
support  of  an  army  of  20,000  men  and  Diaz  could 
collect  only  half  that  number,  when,  after  naming  a 
governor  to  act  for  him  in  his  absence,  he  marched  out 
of  the  capital  early  in  December,  all  opposition  to  the 
General  of  the  Revolutionary  Army  disappeared 
without  a  fight.  Iglesias  did  make  one  effort  to 
oppose  him,  but  only  by  persuasion.  When  Diaz 
entered  Queretaro  without  meeting  the  least  resis- 
tance on  December  20,  he  was  asked  to  agree,  and  did 
agree,  to  a  final  meeting  with  his  rival.  The  interview 
took  place  at  the  farm  of  La  Capilla  (the  Chapel), 
about  three  miles  from  Queretaro.  Iglesias  again 
laid  his  case  before  Diaz  and  expounded  constitutional 
orthodoxy.  But  he  was  no  longer  of  any  value  as  an 
associate  or  even  puppet.  His  men,  who  indeed  were 
starving,  were  deserting  him  in  troops  with  their 
officers.  Diaz  told  him  that  he  had  refused  to  take 
the  interim  Presidency  on  condition  that  he  accepted 
the  Plan,  and  that  he  could  not  expect  that  the  offer 
should  be  renewed.  Don  Jose  abased  himself  so  far 
as  to  offer  to  accept  a  Ministry  named  for  him  by  Diaz. 
But  the  offer  was  declined.  Then  he  retired  from  Silao 
to  Guadalajara,  and  there  on  January  2,  1877,  issued 
a  final  proclamation  to  the  people  of  Mexico.  Having 
made  his  last  protest,  he  took  ship  at  Manzanillo,  and 


i66  DIAZ 

retired  to  exile  at  San  Francisco.  Diaz  made  a 
progress  of  a  peaceful  and  triumphant  character 
through  the  northern  provinces,  and  in  February  was 
back  in  the  capital,  the  acknowledged  master  of 
Mexico.  He  was  already  President,  for  the  election 
had  been  ordered  to  be  held  by  his  representative 
during  his  absence.  The  election  of  electors — on  the 
American  principle — took  place  on  January  28.  As  a 
mere  detail  it  is  perhaps  as  well  to  mention  that  out  of 
10.878  votes  of  electors  chosen  in  181  districts, 
10,500  were  for  Porfirio  Diaz.  There  were  other 
forms  to  be  observed.  The  actual  election  of  the 
President,  or  opening  of  credentials  of  the  selected 
electors,  and  the  election  of  Congress,  were  fixed  for 
February  11  and  12,  just  after  the  President's  return 
from  the  North.  The  Congress  was  to  meet  on 
April  I,  and  on  May  2  Diaz  was  declared  by  the 
Legislature  to  be  the  duly  elected  President.  His 
term  was  to  date  from  the  time  when  he  took  posses- 
sion of  the  Government  after  the  flight  of  Lerdo. 
Therefore  his  four  years  would  be  over  in  November, 
1880. 

If  now  the  question  What,  if  anything,  had  been 
gained  for  the  cause  of  freedom,  good  government, 
and  progress  by  some  two  years  of  fighting  ?  is  put, 
the  answer  is  easy  to  give.  It  had  been  decided  that 
the  man  who  was  most  capable  of  giving  Mexico  at 
any  rate  an  interval  of  peace  and  well-directed 
administration  was  to  be  at  the  head  of  affairs,  with  a 
fair  prospect  of  continuance  in  office.  The  elements 
of  his  power  can  be  easily  realised.  First  of  all  were 
his  personal  reputation  and  his  character.  There  were 
no  doubt  men  in  Mexico,  and  even  several  of  them, 
who  could  have  fought  the  battle  of  Tecoac,  or  could 


tHE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     167 

have  conducted  a  campaign  of  guerrilleros  every  whit 
as  well  as  he.  There  was  nobody  who  had  the  same 
general  reputation,  the  support  of  followers  in  all 
(Quarters'  of  the  Republic,  and  the  confidence  of  the 
moneyed  nten,  native  and  foreign,  who  could  give- 
financial  help  at  a  pinch.  His  moderation,  his' 
capacity  to  administer,  his  probity,  and  his  energy 
were  trusted.  Therefore  all  who  were  tired  of  anarchy 
turned  to  him.  The  longing  for  peace  and  for  some 
chance  to  enjoy  a  little  material  prosperity,  which  had 
caused  the  non-militant  part  of  the  population  to 
hold  aloof  from  him  during  the  struggle  with  Juarez, 
were  now  in  his  favour.  He  had  turned  out  to  be  the 
most  promising  man  after  all.  But  we  must  make 
no  mistake  on  one  point.  All  the  other  forms  of 
support  which  he  could  rely  on  would  have  been 
insufficient  if  he  had  not  won  the  confidence  of  the 
army.  He  himself  had  no  delusion  on  the  subject, 
and  he  shaped  his  conduct  accordingly. 

The  first  speech  he  delivered  to  his  Congress  on 
April  I,  1878,  ends  with  a  passage  which  is  full  of 
instruction  on  this  vital  matter.  In  it  Don  Porfirio 
tells  Congress  explicitly  that  he  had  restored  the  half 
of  all  military  pensions  which  Juarez  and  Lerdo  had 
taken  away  for  reasons  of  economy.  Faith,  the 
President  said,  must  be  kept  with  the  army.  The 
Congress  was  asked  to  help  him  to  carry  out  that 
obligation.  It  was  given  to  understand,  politely 
indeed,  but  with  precision,  that  it  simply  must 
conform  to  the  will  of  the  President  and  the  army. 
And  not  only  must  pensions  be  restored  to  their  full 
figure,  but  the  army  on  foot  must  be  paid.  The 
problem  which  this  necessity  forced  on  President  and 
Congress  alike  was  hard  to  solve.     Thanks   to  the 


i68  DIAZ 

"  commendable  circumstance  "  ^  that  all  the  armed 
followings  of  the  two  defeated  chiefs  had  come  in,  and 
had  incorporated  themselves  in  the  Revolutionary- 
Army,  the  national  army  was  now  in  point  of  numbers 
far  beyond  the  limit  last  fixed  by  Congress.  The 
emptiness  of  the  treasury  was  notorious.  Yet  these 
men  had  been  promised  the  confirmation  of  their  rank 
and  continuance  of  their  pay  or  a  secure  pension  if 
they  would  adhere  to  the  Plan  of  Palo  Blanco.  They 
had  with  very  few  exceptions  adhered,  and  they  must 
not  be  disappointed.  Some,  it  was  true,  who  were 
really  in  revolt  out  of  pure  resentment  against  Lerdo, 
had  no  wish  to  continue  in  arms.  Some  others  who 
had  taken  arms  under  pressure  on  both  sides  were  glad 
to  be  off  home  to  their  brown  wives  and  the  naked 
children  who  were  tumbling  about  their  patches  of 
sugar-cane  or  their  "  magueys."  But  even  when  a 
large  percentage  had  been  withdrawn  from  the  army 
made  up  of  the  three  lately  in  the  field,  there  remained 
a  much  larger  body  than  the  force  last  voted  by  Con- 
gress. But  empty  as  the  treasury  then  was,  and 
whatever  and  whomsoever  was  forced  to  wait,  faith 
must  be  kept  with  the  soldiers.  It  was  not  only  a 
question  of  honour,  but  of  elementary  common 
sense.  Everybody  in  Mexico  knew  very  well  what 
had  followed  the  wholesale  reduction  of  the  army  by 
Juarez.  Even  from  the  merely  practical  point  of 
view,  keeping  faith  was  likely  to  prove  the  cheaper 
course.  But  there  was  an  obligation  of  honour  and  of 
patriotism  to  treat  the  army  well.     The  soldiers  of  all 

^  "  Plausible  circunstancia  "  in  Spanish.  But  the  Castilian  "  plausible," 
though  identical  in  spelling  and  origin  with  our  "  plausible,"  does  not  mean 
the  same  thing.  It  inherits  direct  from  its  mother  "  plauso  "  (applause), 
and  implies  "  really  deserving  of  praise  " — "  a  specious  pretext  "  in  the  old 
and  good  sense. 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     169 

parties  had  just  shown  a  capacity  for  combined  action 
in  the  interest  of  the  country  such  as  had  never  so  far 
been  displayed  by  any  body  of  Mexican  civilians. 
Military  government  is  an  evil  beyond  peradventure, 
because  it  demonstrates  the  total  lack  of  political 
faculty  in  all  other  parts  of  the  State.  But  it  is  the 
least  of  evils  when  it  is  the  alternative  to  anarchy. 
An  army,  even  one  which  as  a  military  force  is  bad,  is 
at  least  an  instrument  of  government.  A  mob  of 
wrangling,  intriguing,  self-seeking  politicians  and 
political  lawyers — Carlyle's  "  attorney  species  " — is 
a  mere  generator  of  anarchy.  The  firmness  Diaz 
showed  in  enforcing  justice  for  the  army  was  one  of 
the  best  proofs  he  gave  of  good  political  faculty. 
Without  a  united,  contented  army  there  could  be  no 
stable  government  in  Mexico.  The  fact  that  he  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  what  no  Mexican  ruler  had  done  before 
is  the  demonstration  of  his  better  practical  faculty, 
and  of  his  humanity  too.  By  keeping  faction  from 
producing  its  ruinous  consequences  among  the  soldiers 
he  gave  the  land  about  a  generation  of  peace  ;  and  he 
was  able  to  get  this  control  over  the  army  because  he 
had  not  shed  blood  in  mere  cruelty.  In  1878,  except 
for  the  executions  after  Miahuatlan,  when  it  could  be 
fairly  alleged  that  the  victims  were  indeed  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word  traitors,  his  hands  were  clean  of 
blood.  His  government  was  based  on  military  force 
because  no  other  foundation  could  be  laid  in  Mexico. 
His  administration  will  be  told  later  on.  But  the 
beginning  of  the  story  is  the  most  appropriate  place 
in  which  to  consider,  what  were  his  method  and  his 
spirit.  We  have  already  seen  with  what  care  Diaz 
made  and  kept  himself  fit  to  wrestle  with  the  responsi- 
bility and  the  long  hours  of  work  which  the  Presi- 


170  DIAZ 

dential  office  eritaiTecI  on  a  man  who  would  not  treat' 
it  merely  as  plunder  to  be  enjoyed.  Yet  Diaz  might 
have  worked,  and  have  worked  himself  tO'  early  ruin, 
if  he  had  been  a  mere  "  mandon."  But  then  no  man 
who  came  to  power  in  Mexico  or  in  any  Spanish- 
American  State  was  less  "  mandon  "  than  he.  The 
note  of  that  class  of  person  is  that  he  is  intoxicated 
with  conceit  of  his  own  grandeur  and  strength.  He 
prefers  to  order  and  to  overbear.  He  supposes  that 
because  nothing  can  be  done  unless  some  force  stands 
ready  for  use  in  case  of  need  and  in  the  background, 
anything  can  be  done  by  force  employed  in  a  suffi- 
ciently ruthless  spirit.  It  is  not  necessary  to  know, 
to  think,  to  look  ahead,  to  learn,  to  consider  others. 
The  order  and  the  application  of  force  are  enough. 
Acting  on  that  principle  the  Santa  Anas,  Marquezes, 
even  Don  Jose  Maria  Iglesias,  had  waded  from  puddle 
to  puddle  of  blood,  and  amid  manifestations  of  self- 
will  really  not  far  removed  from  the  delusions  of  a 
lunatic  asylum,  till  they  went  headlong  over  some 
precipice.  Bold  Bayard,  who  lept  before  he  looked 
because  he  was  blind,  had  been  the  prevalent  model 
in  the  poor,  anarchical  country.  Don  Porfirio  was 
never  known  to  leap  before  he  looked.  He  was  the 
last  man  in  the  world  to  imagine  that  because  you  can 
shear  the  sheep  it  is  safe  to  try  to  shear  the  wolf.  It 
was  said  in  praise  of  our  own  Drake  that  he  was  a 
hearer  of  every  man's  opinion,  but  commonly  a 
follower  of  his  own.  When  a  leader's  own  opinion  is 
based  on  the  best  he  can  get  from  others  and  can 
combine,  no  better  description  of  a  managing  man 
could  well  be  given.  And  it  is  allowed  of  Diaz  that 
he  felt  his  way  and  thought  his  work  out.  When  as 
President    he    had    obtained    full    command    of    the 


THE   FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY    171 

machinery  of  administration  he  put  out  feelers 
through  the  Press,  and  he  "  tuned  his  (newspaper) 
pulpits."  When  he  had  especial  reason  for  looking 
ahead  he  would  appoint  competent  men  to  inquire  for 
him  and  report.  He  would  hear  them  in  private,  and 
he  allowed  the  utmost  freedom  of  speech.  For  him- 
self he  listened  patiently,  and  his  questions  were 
pertinent.  When  he  knew  all  there  was  to  learn  he 
could  act  for  himself. 

It  would  be  strange  if  nobody  had  ever  discovered 
that  Porfirio  Diaz  was  after  all  a  figurehead,  and  that 
the  merit  belonged  to  some  subordinate.  Napoleon, 
as  we  have  all  heard,  owed  his  victories  to  Berthier, 
and  Wellington  could  do  nothing  without  his  Murray. 
The  real  brains  of  Don  Porfirio  were  known  by  some 
sagacious  persons  to  be  deposited  in  the  head  of  Justo 
Benitez,  his  secretary.  But  the  time  came  when  the 
President  dispensed  with  Justo — we  shall  see  in  what 
circumstances — and  was  never  a  penny  the  worse  for 
losing  him.  That  he  could  use  the  services  of  others 
was  obvious  enough.  No  man  could  rule  who  was 
unable  to  employ  agents.  But  Porfirio  Diaz  is  com- 
monly said  to  have  reposed  little  trust  except  where  he 
had  chosen  his  man.  Mexican  politicians  who  had 
held  a  conspicuous  place  in  public  life  before  1878 
found  that  he  kept  them  at  arm's  length.  Don  Matias 
Romero,  who  had  been  Mexican  envoy  at  Washington 
during  the  French  intervention,  and  Don  Ignacio 
Mariscal  were  almost  the  only  exceptions. 

Some  time  passed,  we  must  suppose,  before  he  had 
perfected  his  method  or  had  completed  his  staff. 
And  there  were  differences  between  his  first  term  of 
office  and  those  which  followed.  Yet  he  was  the  same 
man  in   1878  that  he  was  later  on — practical,  not 


172  DIAZ 

blinded  by  self-conceit,  ready  and  eager  to  work  hard, 
open  to  hear  the  good  advice  and  profit  by  the  know- 
ledge of  others,  but  no  less  capable  of  forming  his  own 
opinion,  fixing  his  line  of  policy  and  acting  for  himself. 
He  stood  there  ready  to  do  all  the  good  that  it  was  in 
him  to  do  for  his  country.  If  the  good  he  was  able 
to  achieve  was  in  the  main  transient,  the  fault  must 
be  shown  to  have  been  wholly  his  before  he  is  blamed 
for  failure.  A  far  greater  man,  one  who  was  a 
teacher  and  an  inspirer,  might  have  raised  the  moral 
and  intellectual  level  of  Mexico.  At  least  one  shrinks 
from  saying  that  he  could  not.  But  we  must  take 
Porfirio  Diaz  as  he  was,  a  practical  man,  a  born  man 
of  government  who  could  keep  order  and  administer 
ably.  He,  we  are  told — and  the  facts  bear  out  the 
judgment — soon  came  to  the  conclusion  that  nothing 
more  was  within  his  scope.  ''  Less  government  and 
more  freedom "  had  been  his  maxim.  A  short 
experience  convinced  him  that  "Less  politics  and 
more  administration  "  was  what  the  country  required. 
Politics  in  the  world  he  was  destined  to  live  in  meant 
intrigue  with  or  without  military  violence,  and  nothing 
more.  It  was  a  curse,  and  from  it  he  tried  with  con- 
siderable success  to  preserve  the  land.  More  adminis- 
tration when  the  object  was  a  good  one  and  the 
methods  were  rational  was  a  blessing  for  as  long  as  it 
could  last.  To  it  he  applied  himself,  and  it  called  for 
the  strenuous  exertion  of  all  his  faculties  and  the  firm 
use  of  the  military  force  he  had  gathered  behind  him. 
Don  Rafael  de  Zayas  Hernandez  sums  up  the  general 
situation  of  the  country  in  terms  which  are  borne  out 
by  the  universal  testimony  of  others  :  "  He  found  the 
treasury  empty,  credit  lost,  a  complete  lack  of  confi- 
dence, foreign  relations  either  broken  off  or  suspended, 


THE    FIGHT   FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     173 

serious  difficulties  with  the  United  States  were  press- 
ing, and  much  judgment  and  tact,  steadiness,  and 
patriotism  were  needed  to  avert  so  much  danger  and 
save  the  national  honour." 

The  most  elementary  needs  of  an  orderly  society 
were  not  supplied.  The  whole  country  was  swarming 
with  bandits,  who  kidnapped  men  of  means  and  held 
them  to  ransom.  The  trains  from  Veracruz  dared 
not  leave  the  stations  without  a  guard.  Murder 
and  robbery  were  of  daily  occurrence.  And  all 
these  crimes  were  committed  with  impunity,  for  there 
was  no  means  of  suppressing  them.  The  evil  was  of 
old  standing.  It  dated  from  the  rising  of  Hidalgo  in 
1 810.  It  had  been  intensified  by  the  war  between 
Liberals  and  Conservatives  and  the  French  inter- 
vention. Nothing,  or  nothing  really  effectual,  had 
been  done  to  amend  this  long  permanent  anarchy 
during  the  administrations  of  Juarez  and  of  Lerdo. 
The  preliminary  to  whatever  other  good  was  to  be 
done  must  needs  be  the  restoration — or  perhaps  we 
ought  to  say  the  establishment  for  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  the  Mexicans  as  an  independent  people 
— of  security.  But  the  Government  was  hemmed  in 
by  a  vicious  circle.  Without  good  administration 
there  could  be  no  development  of  national  prosperity. 
And  yet,  without  the  resources  which  industry  and 
prosperity  supply,  how  was  it  possible  to  provide — 
that  is  to  say,  to  pay  for — a  capable  administration  ? 
In  the  presence  of  such  a  hopeless-looking  task 
clamouring  to  be  performed,  a  ruler  and  a  whole 
people  might  very  well  think  that  politics,  even  of  a 
higher  order  than  what  had  gone  by  the  name  in 
Mexico,  could  wait  till  a  good  administration  had  made 
it  possible  for  work  to  be  resumed.     A  nation  must 


174  I^IAZ 

live  before  it  can  philosophise.  The  problem  for 
Mexico  was  how  it  was  to  live — or  rather  the  problem 
for  the  man  who  assumed  the  task  of  finding  a  solution 
was  how  he  could  enable  a  country  which  had  no 
corporate  will  of  its  own,  but  only  a  plaintive  longing 
for  good  government,  to  exist  as  a  community 
at  all. 

It  was  a  great  misfortune,  and  an  evil  inherited  from 
the  past,  that  the  President  could  look  for  no  help 
from  the  Church.  Its  power  was  still  great  in  many 
parts  of  the  Republic — in,  for  instance,  the  thinly- 
inhabited  Pacific  State  Michoacan.  The  wealth  and 
the  great  lands  were  gone,  but  the  hold  of  the  Church 
on  the  fidelity  of  the  poor  Indian,  and  mostly  Indian, 
population  was  strong.  Its  help  would  have  been  of 
the  highest  value  to  a  Government  which  desired  to 
raise  the  standard  of  morality  and  industry  in  the 
working  classes.  But  that  aid  could  not  be  given 
by  the  Church,  nor  asked  for  by  the  State.  The 
Church  had  been  despoiled  and  could  not  forgive  the 
despoiler.  The  reader  who  has  no  personal  experience 
of  the  relations  between  the  clergy  and  the  State  in 
the  so-called  Latin  countries  of  to-day  finds  it  hard  to 
realise  the  depth  of  the  gulf  between  them.  "  El 
Gobierno  es  un  ladron  "  ("  The  Government  is  a 
thief  ")  is  the  compendious  formula  of  the  clergy  in 
Spain  and  in  most  of  its  old  colonies.  They  cannot 
forgive  the  "  el  grande  latrocinio  "  ("  the  great  rob- 
bery ")  ;  neither  can  they  forgive  the  compulsory 
civil  marriage  which  was  introduced  by  Juarez  and 
cannot  be  abolished.  They  must  condemn  it  on 
religious  grounds,  and  they  do  not  detest  it  the  less 
that  it  was  expressly  meant  to  be  injurious  to  them. 
The  high  marriage  fees  exacted  by  the  Church  have 


THE   FIGHT  FOR  THE    PRESIDENCY     175 

been  said  to  have  been  one  of  the  reasons  why  the 
Mexican  peon  indebted  himself  to  an  employer.  The 
civil  marriage  was  meant  to  deprive  the  Church  of 
this  source  of  revenue  also.  The  compulsory  secular 
education  of  which  much  is  heard,  and  something  is 
seen,  in  Mexico  was  no  less  odious.  We  need  not  go 
out  of  our  own  country  to  learn  how  very  offensive  to 
religious  people  is  an  education  divorced  from  religion. 
We  need  not  go  to  Mexico  to  know  how  a  clergy  resents 
being  deprived  of  the  great  opening  for  good  work 
(that  is,  when  they  are  pious  men)  or  the  immense 
power  (that  is,  when  they  are  only  human)  which  is 
conferred  on  them  by  the  control  of  education.  So 
because  of  grievances  and  on  doctrinal  grounds  the 
clergy  were  hostile  to  the  Government  of  Porfirio 
Diaz. 

Nor  was  that  all.  Those  who  have  not  lived  in 
the  midst  of  it  cannot  realise  the  fury  of  distrust, 
hatred,  and  repulsion  which  animates  those  who 
stand  over  against  the  Church.  An  Englishman  may 
think  that  his  Established  Church  asks  for  too  much, 
and  gives  itself  airs.  He  does  not,  or  he  is  a  very  rare 
exception  if  he  does,  grow  hot  against  it  as  a  fount 
of  mental  imbecility  and  moral  corruption.  Now  the 
anti-clerical  of  the  Latin  countries  very  commonly 
does.  So  President  Diaz  had  to  endure  the  reproaches 
of  some  of  those  who  had  fought  with  him  under  the 
leadership  of  Juarez.  Though  he  gave  back  no  lands, 
though  he  enforced  the  law  which  imposed  civil 
marriage,  though  he  would  not  suffer  the  clergy  to 
appear  in  clerical  dress  in  the  streets,  nor  so  much  as 
allow  the  ringing  of  church  bells,  they  accused  him  of 
truckling  to  the  clergy  and  encouraging  the  corruption 
of  the  people  because  he  did  not  put  a  stop  to  such 


176  DIAZ 

functions  as  the  coronation  of  a  certain  sanctified 
statue  of  the  Virgin.^ 

Meanwhile  the  clergy  were  denouncing  him  as  a 
persecutor.  All  through  the  administration  of  Lerdo, 
who  was  peculiarly  odious  to  the  Church  because  his 
brother  was  the  author  of  the  law  which  secularised 
the  Church  lands,  and  then  till  far  into  the  rule  of  Diaz, 
there  took  place  a  series  of  clerical  riots  in  towns  and 
villages.  The  worst  were  in  Michoacan,  but  there 
were  others  elsewhere.  A  President  who  had  by  the 
ears  two  such  wolves  as  the  militant  clerical  and  anti- 
clerical parties  had  need  to  keep  a  firm  hold  of  them. 

^  To  prevent  the  ringing  of  church  bells  may  look  like  a  contemptible 
piece  of  petty  persecution.  But  a  church  bell  may  be  rung  by  way  of 
demonstration  or  counter-demonstration.  A  few  years  ago  it  was  my  luck 
to  attend  a  political  meeting  of  a  Liberal  shade  in  a  Spanish  city.  It  was 
held  in  a  hall.  On  the  other  side  of  the  street  was  a  convent.  For  al  ong 
time,  and  until  the  police  struck  in,  the:  onvent  bells  were  rung  madly 
with  the  very  probable  intent,  and  certainly  with  the  result,  of  rendering 
the  speakers  half-inaudible.  There  was  an  overflow  meeting  in  the  street. 
The  clerical  demonstration  was  resented,  and  if  there  had  not  been  a  strong 
force  of  constabulary  on  the  spot  the  convent  would  have  been  attacked. 
The  constabulary  officer  in  command  had  to  tell  the  superior  of  the  convent 
that  he  was  provoking  a  riot,  and  to  order  him  to  stop  the  bells. 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE    FIRST   TERM 


Diaz  settled  himself,  not  in  the  official  residence  of 
the  President,  the  former  Palace  of  the  Viceroys,  but 
in  a  private  house,  to  struggle  with  the  hopeless- 
looking  problem  he  had  undertaken  to  manage. 
Like  other  tasks,  it  grew  less  terrible  when  resolutely 
tackled  than  it  had  appeared  to  be  from  a  distance. 
If  we  could  gain  access  to  the  very  private  and  con- 
fidential papers  of  Mexican  moneyed  men  and  foreign 
capitalists  whose  interests  were  bound  up  with  the 
restoration  of  order,  we  would  no  doubt  learn  how  the 
new  Government  was  supplied  with  the  funds  which 
tided  it  over  its  first  days.  In  most  Spanish-American 
political  conflicts  there  are  holders  of  the  purse-strings 
who  keep  in  the  background  but  who  provide  the 
military  chest.  Some  body  of  interested  moneyed 
men  no  doubt  did  for  Porfirio  Diaz  what  the  bankers  of 
Paris  did  for  Napoleon  in  the  interval  before  Brumaire, 
when  he  was  as  yet  only  General  Bonaparte  and  not 
even  First  Consul.  When  the  immediate  need  had 
been  met,  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  revenue  equal  to 
calls  which  could  not  be  neglected  was  not  insuperable. 
The  army  did  not  need  to  be  laboriously  persuaded 
before  it  could  understand  that  a  revenue  must  be 
secured  if  it  were  to  enjoy  the  pay,  allowances,  and 
pensions  to  which  it  was  entitled.  It  was  a  fact 
patent  to  the  dimmest  intelligence  that  as  the  best 
part  of  the  national  revenue  came  from  the  customs 


178  DIAZ 

levied  at  Veracruz,  che  road  to  the  main  seaport  must 
be  opened  and  kept  open.  Therefore  the  President 
had  the  willingly-given  help  of  officers  and  soldiers  in 
effecting  the  first  piece  of  work  to  be  done. 

Armed  men  in  competent  numbers  and  in  a  reason- 
able state  of  discipline  had  no  great  exertions  to  make 
before  they  could  establish  a  fair  working  state  of 
order  in  the  more  vitally  important  regions.     It  is 
true  that  many  of  the  so-called  soldiers  were  by  origin 
brigands  and  guerrilleros.    But  it  is  also  true  that  most 
of  them  had  taken  to  these  lines  of  life  because  there 
was  very  little  else  for  them  to  do.  They  were  poachers 
who  were  quite  disposed  to  adopt  the  honest  trade  of 
gamekeeper.     Diaz  made  prompt  and  effectual  use 
of  their  better  aptitudes.     The  organisation  of  the 
excellent  constabulary  known  as  "  guardias  rurales  " 
did  not  begin  with  Diaz,  but  it  was  vastly  improved 
and  developed  by  him.     The  rurales  in  their  brown  or 
buff  uniforms,  high  steeple-crowned  sombreros,  well 
armed  and  well  mounted,  were  to  constitute  not  the 
least  useful  of  the  President's  instruments  of  govern- 
ment.    He  recruited  them  freely  among  the  men  who, 
under  himself  or  other  "  caudillos  "  and  "  cabecillas  " 
of  the  days  of  disorder,  had  learnt  all  the  mountain 
paths  and  hiding  places  they  were  now  to  supervise, 
in  the  course  of  years  of  guerrillero  and  bandit  adven- 
ture.    They  were  masters  of  all  the  devices  they  had 
practised,  and  now,  having  decided  to  exchange  a  life 
in  which  long  intervals  of  sloth  and  hardship  were 
relieved  by  occasional  and  uncertain  hauls  of  booty,  for 
regular  pay  and  a  position  of  social  credit,  they  became 
a  terror  to  such  evil-doers  as  they  themselves  had  been 
in  their  unregenerate  days.     The  perhaps  imaginary 
Irishman  who  confessed  that  he  and  his  friends  were 


THE    FIRST  TERM  179 

not  afraid  of  the  soldiers  but  of  the  poHce  very  exactly- 
expressed  the  sentiments  which  were  rapidly  instilled 
into  disorderly  Mexicans.  A  company  of  soldiers 
might  be  befooled,  but  not  a  detachment  of  old  prac- 
titioners who  knew  the  country  as  they  knew  the  palms 
of  their  hands,  who  were  everywhere,  and  who  knew 
not  only  the  places  but  the  persons,  who  would  learn 
at  once  whether  any  man  was  absent  from  the  house 
where  he  ought  to  be,  and  why.  The  methods 
adopted  by  the  rurales  may  not  have  been,  and  indeed 
were  not,  what  would  be  suffered  in  the  kindred  Irish 
Constabulary.  They  were  nearer  the  ways  of  the 
Spanish  Civil  Guard.  A  practice  which  in  Mexico 
was  even  embodied  in  a  law — the  "  Ley  Fuga  "  (the 
"  Law  of  Flight  ") — gave  the  rurales  large  powers  of 
summary  jurisdiction.  If  a  man  did  not  surrender  at 
once  when  summoned,  or  if  when  being  taken  to  prison 
he  attempted  to  escape,  they  were  authorised  to  shoot 
him  on  the  spot.  As  from  the  nature  of  their  work  it 
commonly  happened  that  there  were  no  witnesses  of 
the  resistance  to  arrest,  or  attempt  to  escape,  save 
the  rurales  themselves,  we  can  understand  that  sum- 
mary executions  were  nowise  uncommon.  We  may 
take  it  as  pretty  certain  that  when  a  man  was  a 
notorious  offender  who  had  given  trouble,  and  par- 
ticularly if  he  was  one  who  at  any  time  had  injured 
a  member  of  the  corps,  he  always  offered  resistance  or 
attempted  to  escape.  But  it  is  not  said  that  the 
rurales  abused  their  power  grossly,  or  in  order  to 
extort  an  advantage  of  any  kind  for  themselves.  And 
it  is  a  fact  that  men  who  have  inherited  Spanish  blood 
and  ideas  are  very  tolerant  of  the  use  of  summary 
methods  in  dealing  with  criminals.  They  trust 
rurales  or  civil  guards  more  than  they  do  the  civil 

N  2 


i8o  DIAZ 

tribunals  which  they  believe  to  be  corrupt,  and  they 
think  the  summary  ''  quatro  tiros  "  (four  shots)  of 
the  constabulary  vastly  preferable  to  the  lumbering 
procedure  of  the  courts.  Within  no  long  period  life 
and  property  were  tolerably  safe  in  the  valley  of 
Mexico,  on  the  Plain  of  Anahuac,  and  over  a  broad 
belt  of  country  on  either  side  of  the  road  to  Veracruz. 
If  the  police  in  the  towns  was  not  so  good,  at  least 
there  began  to  be  a  police  of  which  we  may  say  that 
it  did  deserve  the  name  given  to  the  corps  to  which 
Diaz  had  belonged  in  his  boyhood,  "  Peor  es  nada." 
It  was  a  "  better  than  nothing." 

There  was  another  kind  of  predatory  creature,  who 
was  all  the  more  dangerous  because  his  offences  were 
more  subtle  than  robbery  under  arms  and  were 
beyond  the  scope  of  the  rurales.  The  public  service 
swarmed  with  bribers  and  blackmailers  and  thieves. 
The  long  disorders  which  had  favoured  brigandage 
were  no  less  friendly  to  the  corrupt  official.  When 
even  the  army  could  not  be  paid,  nor  the  interest  on 
the  public  debt,  it  followed  that  the  civil  officials  had 
to  go  without  their  salaries — or  at  any  rate  without 
regular  payment.  The  armed  men  were  allowed  to 
recoup  by  rapine — an  unrivalled  training  for  highway 
robbery — and  the  civil  officials  to  gain  a  livelihood 
by  corruption.  The  advantages  of  the  position  were 
so  great  that  places  under  Government  were  eagerly 
sought  for.  Men  of  influence  provided  for  their 
trusty  followers  by  foisting  them  on  a  public  office. 
It  was  calculated  that  when  Diaz  became  President 
there  were  2,000  confessedly  superfluous  officials  in 
the  public  offices  of  the  capital.  They  were,  it  is  true, 
not  entirely  free  from  check.  The  great  men  at  the 
head  levied  a  part  of  their   dishonest  gains  as  a 


THE   FIRST  TERM  i8i 

consideration  for  giving  them  a  wide  margin  of  free- 
dom. Corruption  had  in  fact  got  to  the  point  when 
it  could  be  flaunted.  Mr.  Wells,  who  visited  Mexico 
a  few  years  after  1878,  was  not  unacquainted  with 
graft  in  his  native  United  States,  but  he  found  it 
avowed,  even  after  the  reform  had  begun  in  Mexico, 
with  an  audacity  which  was  new  in  his  experience. 
He  heard  of  a  countryman  of  his  own  who  passed  for 
being  exceptionally  familiar  with  lobbies  and  lobby- 
ing. This  old  practitioner  had  a  concession  to  secure, 
or  some  other  interest  to  be  served,  and  he  approached 
the  important  person  whose  approval  was  needed 
boldly.  "  If  you  will  arrange  that  for  me,"  he  said, 
"  I  will  pay  you  $5,000  and  keep  the  transaction  a 
strict  secret."  "  If  you  will  made  it  $10,000  you  may 
tell  all  the  world,"  was  the  answer.  The  story  in 
slightly  different  forms  is  told  of  many  lands,  but  it  is 
not  thought  plausible  save  in  certain  conditions  of 
public  morality. 

The  new  President  did  at  least  charge  home  on  the 
pest.  Having  the  whole  armed  force  in  his  hand,  and 
the  army  being  well  persuaded  that  if  it  was  to  receive 
its  pay  and  allowance  out  of  the  revenue  of  Mexico 
($17,000,000)  some  reasonable  measure  of  honesty 
must  be  shown  in  handling  the  money,  he  could  use 
the  broom  freely.  It  would  be  rash  indeed  to  affirm 
that  bribery  and  corruption  ceased  either  then  or 
afterwards.  But  the  staff  was  cut  down  to  just 
proportions  to  begin  with.  A  stronger  measure, 
which  only  a  very  firmly  planted  ruler  would  have 
dared  to  take,  followed.  A  tax  was  levied  on  all  non- 
military  salaries.  In  a  country  where  direct  taxation 
was  not  known  save  in  the  form  of  a  poll-tax  on  Indian 
labourers  and  was  vehemently  hated,  the  Government 


1 82  DIAZ 

officials  were  subject  to  income  tax.  The  measure, 
hard  as  it  was,  could  not  be  spared  in  view  of  the 
distressed  condition  of  the  Treasury.  Don  Porfirio 
set  an  example  of  sacrifice  by  consenting  to  the  reduc- 
tion of  his  own  salary  from  $25,000  to  $15,000.  He 
lived  very  quietly  in  his  house  in  the  Calle  de  la  Moneda 
(Mint  Street),^  and  was  as  unpretentious  in  his  way  of 
life  as  he  was  accessible  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men.  His  disinterestedness  compared  well  with  the 
rather  grasping  action  of  Juarez,  and  must  have  had  a 
wholesome  effect.  But  he  did  not  rely  on  compulsory 
sacrifice  and  good  example  alone.  He  knew  that  life 
must  be  made  tolerable  for  those  whose  services  are 
indispensable.  Therefore  he  began  by  taking  care 
that  the  reduced  salaries  should  at  least  be  regularly 
paid.  When  by  1896  the  revenue  had  grown,  and 
the  sacrifices  imposed  in  1878  were  no  longer  necessary, 
the  tax  on  salaries  was  taken  off.  At  a  still  later  date 
the  scale  of  pay  was  raised  to  meet  the  increased  cost 
of  living.  To  employ  no  more  clerks  than  are  needed 
to  do  the  work  and  to  pay  them  a  salary  on  which 
they  can  live  decently  are  the  two  antecedent  con- 
ditions of  the  formation  of  an  honest  public  service. 
The  truth  has  been  patent  for  centuries.  The  mis- 
fortune of  many  countries  has  been  that  it  was  ignored. 
President  Diaz  did  try  to  establish  these  conditions,  and 
it  is  a  credible  proposition  that  the  corruption  which 
continued  to  exist  did  not  go  beyond  what  was  normal 
in  England  till  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  simplicity  of  his  life,  the  accessibility  of  the 
President,  and  his  readiness  to  hear  all  men  who 
wished  to  speak  to  him  had  much  to  do  with  the  uni- 

^  In  Spanish  moneda  is  money,  una  moneda  is  a  coin.     La  Casa  de  la 
Moneda,  or  for  short  La  Moneda,  is  the  Mint. 


THE   FIRST  TERM  183 

versal  popularity  he  earned  and  kept  for  years.     They 
would  have  had  their  effect  in  any  country,  but  they 
were  particularly  valuable  in  Mexico.  They  were  made 
possible  partly  by  the  general  simplicity  of  existence, 
but  still  more  by  the  fact  that  the  people  had  inherited 
their  standard  of  manners  from  the  Spaniard  at  his 
best.     The  Spaniard  is  always  willing  to  recognise 
rank,  but  he  expects  to  be  "  treated  like  a  man  "  and 
without  "  vapours."     The  neat  indications  of  rank 
which  can  be  made  by  the  use  of  the  Don,  the  Sefior,  or 
the  unadorned  Christian  name,  are  understood  by  all 
— by  Pedro  as  well  as  by  Don  Luis.     So  there  is  the 
less  fear  that  Don  Luis  will  lower  himself,  or  Pedro 
will  presume  when  they  talk  together  "  like  men." 
And  because  the  formulas  are  fixed  and  their  ortho- 
doxy is  undisputed  and  universally  known,  the  man 
who  has  risen  from  the  ranks  drops  with  wonderful 
ease  into  the  ways  and  bearing  of  a  "  gentleman  born." 
There  is  no  uncertainty  as  to  what  is  the  right  thing 
to   do,    and   therefore    but   little    of   the   underbred 
uneasiness  of  the  parvenu.     Sefior  Fornaro  will  have 
it  that  Don  Porfirio  learnt  the  dignity  he  showed  in 
his  later  years  after  his  second  marriage  to  a  lady  of 
a  good  Creole  stock.     Seiior  de  Zayas  says  that  in  his 
earlier  years  he  was  timid  in  his  bearing.     Timidity 
may   be   due   to   an   absence   of   mere   self-conceit. 
Foreigners  who  saw  him  were  of  opinion  that  long 
before  he  was  President  he  had  the  air  of  a  soldier 
and  a  gentleman.     It  was  not  only  because  Mexico 
is  a  republic,  but  because  the  Mexicans  were  in  part 
Spaniards,  and  trained  in  the  old  Spanish  standard, 
that  the  son  of  the  innkeeper  at  Oaxaca,  who  had  also 
been  farrier  in  a  cavalry  regiment,  was  perfectly  at 
home  as  head  of  the  State. 


1 84  DIAZ 

In  the  meantime  popularity,  military  support,  and 
the  general  longing  for  peace  and  freedom  to  work 
were  none  too  much  to  bear  Diaz  up  in  the  task  before 
him.  There  were  three  dangers  he  had  to  face.  To 
put  them  in  their  order  of  real  importance  they  were  : 
the  relations  of  Mexico  with  the  United  States  ;  the 
distress  of  the  national  finances  ;  and  a  remnant  of 
armed  faction  which  plotted,  agitated,  and  broke  out 
sporadically  for  a  time.  Unless  he  had  averted  the 
first  he  would  have  striven  in  vain  to  overcome  the 
second  and  the  third.  From  the  day  on  which  he 
became  President  till  that  other  thirty-three  years 
later  when  he  sailed  from  Veracruz  amid  the  down- 
fall of  his  labours,  there  can  have  been  few  days, 
and  there  cannot  have  been  a  single  month,  in 
which  the  relations  of  his  country  to  the  United 
States  did  not  give  him  cause  for  thought  and 
anxiety.  The  great  power  to  the  north  has  hung, 
and  hangs,  over  Mexico  like  a  mass  of  snow  or 
earth  which  some  act  of  folly  or  accident  may  turn 
into  avalanche  or  landslip.  Questions  of  the  dip- 
lomatic order  pressed  for  solution,  and  behind 
them,  giving  them  an  almost  awful  importance, 
were  physical,  geographical,  social,  and  financial 
forces. 

It  is  a  literal  statement  of  fact,  that  for  a  Mexican 
ruler  the  exterior  world  is  divided  into  the  United 
States  and  all  the  rest.  If  the  first  is  friendly,  the 
second  can  do  him  but  little  harm.  If  the  first  is 
hostile,  the  second  can  render  no  help.  In  1878  there 
was  a  strong  probability  that  the  United  States  might 
become  actively  hostile.  Before  going  further  let  us 
guard  ourselves  with  care  against  the  risk  of  seeming 
to  agree  with  those  critics,  of  whom  some  of  the  most 


THE   FIRST  TERM  185 

trenchant  have  been  Americans,^  who  have  said  that 
the  United  States  have  been  aggressively  brutal  to 
their  neighbour.  Individual  Americans  have  behaved 
badly  to  Mexico,  but  the  Government  of  Washington, 
which  alone  acts  for  the  United  States,  has  on  the 
whole  shown  much  long-suffering  in  its  dealing  with  the 
unruly  and  provocative  community  on  its  southern 
border. 

The  numerous  and  chronic  disputes  between  them 
have  arisen  from  two  kindred  sources — the  disorders 
of  the  border,  and  the  losses  caused  to  American  citi- 
zens by  or  through  the  internal  confusions  of  the 
Spanish- American  Republic.  Putting  aside  the  con- 
ditions of  the  border  for  the  moment,  the  two  sides 
may  be  treated  together,  to  begin  with,  simply  because 
there  was  always  a  question  of  compensation  to  be 
paid  for  wrongs  inflicted  on  individuals.  There  were 
cases  in  which  the  sufferer  was  a  Mexican  ;  and  then 
the  one  claim  had  to  be  set  off  against  the  other.  The 
Mexican  grievances  mostly  arose  from  the  border,  but 
the  Americans  had  suffered  everywhere.  There  were 
cases  of  violence  practised  on  individual  citizens  of 
the  States  in  various  ways,  but  the  worst  of  aU  were 
the  constant  extortions  of  forced  levies  of  military 
service  and  money.  On  paper  the  Mexicans  had  often 
a  good  case,  and  their  diplomatists,  who  are  by  no 
means  lacking  in  quickness  of  wit,  could  frequently 
seem  to  put  the  United  States  in  the  wrong.  They 
could,  and  they  did,  argue  with  much  verbal  force 
that  these  levies  and  contributions  did  not  constitute 
a  true  grievance,  because  they  were  not  imposed  on 

^  Mr.  Wells,  for  Instance,  does  not  mince  matters.  He  declares  roundly 
that  the  United  States  have  played  the  part  of  a  great  bully  to  their  weaker 
neighbour,  and  that  opinion  is  far  from  being  peculiar  to  him. 


1 86  DIAZ 

Americans  alone  but  on  the  whole  body  of  the 
inhabitants.  Now  it  is  a  tenable  proposition  that 
if  a  man  will  settle  in  a  foreign  country  in  search  of 
some  advantage  to  be  obtained  for  himself  he  has  no 
ground  for  claiming  better  or  other  treatment  than  is 
shown  to  the  people  among  whom  he  has  of  his  own 
free  will  chosen  to  live.  But  this  is  only  true  when 
the  country  he  lives  in  offers  good  guarantees  for  order 
and  equal  treatment  in  a  uniform  and  legal  way. 
Moralists  and  sentimentalists  may  refuse  to  make  a 
difference  between  country  and  country.  They  may 
ask  why  did  you  go  where  the  kind  of  treatment  you 
desire  to  receive  was  notoriously  not  to  be  found  ? 
The  answer  is  perhaps  illogical,  but  it  is  a  good  one. 
It  is,  we  go  because  the  world  is  so  constituted  that 
we  do  and  we  must.  If  the  question  is  why  do  you 
make  a  difference  between  one  country  and  another  ? 
the  answer  is  perfectly  logical.  It  is  that  they  are 
different.  There  is  no  parity  between  the  obligation 
to  pay  taxes,  to  conform  to  police  rules,  to  submit  to 
expropriation  for  public  services,  or  to  the  compulsory 
use  of  property  in  a  time  of  war,  to  which  an  American 
might  be  called  upon  to  yield  in  England  or  France, 
and  the  outrages — the  "  avanias  " — of  Turkish  pashas 
and  Chinese  mandarins.  Now  the  whole  case  of 
America  was  that  the  wrongs  which  its  citizens  had 
suffered  in  Mexico  at  the  hands  of  Santa  Anas  and 
Miramons  were  of  the  same  nature  as  the  excesses  of 
pashas  and  mandarins.  If  Mexico  wished  to  be 
treated  like  England  or  France  she  must  offer  the 
same  guarantees,  and  that  she  had  notoriously  never 
done.  Therefore  she  must  expect  to  be  classed  with 
Turkey  or  China.  And  in  sober  fact  the  United  States 
were  right.     Since  they  were  they  must  be  allowed  to 


THE   FIRST  TERM  187 

have  shown  moderation.  Even  if  we  look  back  to 
and  beyond  the  war  of  1 848  the  Union  can  fairly  say 
that  it  endured  more  and  retaliated  less  than  European 
Governments  have  done.  A  comparison  between  their 
policy  to  Mexico  and  that  of  the  Marquess  of  Wellesley 
to  the  Mahratta  rulers  or  of  the  British  Government 
to  China  (a  much  more  stable  country  than  Mexico) 
ought  to  be  in  their  favour  in  the  opinion  of  those  who 
condemn  the  use  of  force. 

After  the  war  of  1 848  there  had  been  long  discussions 
which  dragged  on  till  1876.  When  at  last  a  settle- 
ment was  made  it  left  Mexico  with  the  obligation  to 
pay  $4,125,622  in  yearly  instalments  of  $300,000  to 
begin  in  January,  1877.  A  rebate  of  $150,622  to  be 
deducted  from  this  sum  was  made  for  proved  Mexican 
claims.  It  is  not  unworthy  of  notice  that  the 
$4,125,622  was  all  that  remained  of  2,000  American 
claims  which  amounted  to  $556,788,600.  The  com- 
missioners who  examined  the  accounts  presented  to 
them  had  to  reduce  to  fair  proportions  whole  floods  of 
greedy  pretensions,  supported  by  a  positive  frenzy  of 
mendacity  and  forgery.  The  story  had  a  sequel 
which  can  hardly  be  quoted  against  the  United  States. 
Among  the  claims  presented  and  supported  by  the 
United  States  Government  were  two  made  by  a  Mr. 
Benjamin  Weil  and  by  the  La  Abra  Mining  Company 
for  $487,810  and  $681,041.  The  Mexican  Govern- 
ment protested  against  them  as  fraudulent,  and  they 
became  the  subject  of  litigation  in  the  States.  The 
law's  delays  dragged  the  case  on  till  1900,  when  the 
Court  decided  against  Mr.  Weil  and  the  company. 
Then  the  United  States  Government  both  refused  to 
collect  any  more  for  them  and  refunded  the  payments 
which  had  already  been  made.     It  should  be  added 


is*^ 


1 88  DIAZ 

also  that  the  umpire  chosen  by  both  sides  in  1873  was 
Sir  Edward  Thornton,  British  Minister  at  Washington. 

In  1877  the  demand  of  the  United  States  for  the 
payment  of  the  first  instalment  due  in  January  was 
to  be  met.  The  sum  of  $300,000  was  not  a  heavy 
one  for  a  revenue  of  $17,000,000.  But  the  revenue 
had  not  been  collected  when  Congress  met  in  April, 
and  further  delays  would  be  dangerous.  Indeed, 
there  was  no  regular  channel  by  which  a  request  for 
time  could  be  made.  The  Government  of  Washington 
treated  Diaz  as  only  one  military  adventurer  the 
more,  and  did  not  so  far  recognise  him  as  lawful 
President.  It  is  to  be  presumed  that  this  refusal  of 
recognition  was  meant  to  be  a  form  of  coercion  and  a 
warning,  since  it  is  difficult  on  a  survey  of  Mexican 
history  to  see  that  the  election  of  Diaz  was  less  lawful 
than  those  of  his  predecessors  with  extremely  rare 
exceptions — if,  indeed,  there  was  more  than  one. 
The  attitude  of  the  United  States  Government  was  of 
course  an  encouragement  to  the  irreconcilable  Ler- 
distas  who  were  plotting  in  their  places  of  exile  in 
Texas.  The  first  instalment  of  $300,000  must  be 
paid  off,  and  it  was  paid  by  having  recourse  to  the 
familiar  expedient  of  a  forced  loan.  Henceforward 
the  payment  was  regularly  discharged  till  the  whole 
award  was  cleared  off  in  1890.  In  April,  1878,  after 
the  second  instalment  had  been  supplied,  the  United 
States  Government  did  at  last  recognise  President 
Diaz,  and  the  relations  of  the  two  Governments  became 
as  friendly  as  the  unending  disputes  on  the  frontier 
allowed. 

These  last  did  not  end,  and  have  not  ended  when  this 
page  is  being  written.  They  are  secure  of  a  renewal 
of  life  so  long  as  the  condition  of  the  country  on  the 


THE   FIRST  TERM  189 

Mexican  side  of  the  line  and  the  population  on  the 
northern   side   remain   the   same.     When   after   the 
disastrous  war  of  1848  Mexico  was  deprived  of  all 
the  territory  it  claimed  to  hold  north  of  the  Rio  Grande 
— more  than  half  the  total  area  of  the  Republic — the 
Mexicans  remained,  as  was  but  natural,  angry  and 
apprehensive.     It  is  true  that  this  vast  expanse  of 
territory  was  of  little  value.     Much  of  it  was  waterless 
and  barren,  but  to  a  far  greater  extent  it  was  worthless 
because  it  was  not  inhabited  by  a  useful  population. 
A  few  settlements  of  Mexican  half-breeds  were  lost 
in  empty  deserts,  and  among  tribes  of  Red  American 
Indians,    Apaches,    and    others    only   less    bestially 
ferocious  than   they.     Mexico  herself  could  supply 
no  colonists,  and  the  story  of  those  whom  she  had 
invited  to  Texas  from  abroad  was  not  encouraging 
either  to  them  or  to  her.     Still,  Mexicans  could  hardly 
be  expected  to  bear  their  loss  with  indifference.     It 
was  not  possible  that  they  should  be  without  fear  of  a 
new  American  advance.     The  best  and,  in  the  long 
run,  the  only  effectual  defence  would  have  been  to 
settle   the   country   on   the   right   bank   of   the   Rio 
Grande  up  to  El  Paso,  and  then  on  the  south  of  the 
line  running  westward  from  El  Paso  to  the  Pacific, 
which  together  marked  the  new  frontier.     But  the 
Mexicans  had  no  overflow  of  their  own  to  settle  in 
these  regions,  and  they  could  not  draw  on  the  popula- 
tion of  Europe.     The  conditions  which  have  allowed 
of  considerable  German  and  Italian  settlements  in 
Southern  Brazil  and  the  Argentine  did  not  exist  for 
such  remote,  and  before  the  construction  of  railways 
such   inaccessible,   regions   as   Chihuahua,   Coahuila, 
Sinaloa,  and  Sonora.     The  peninsula  of  Lower  Cali- 
fornia and  the  maritime  States  both  on  the  Pacific 


190  DIAZ 

Coast  and  on  the  Atlantic  were,  it  is  true,  open  to 
immigration  from  the  sea.  But  the  Mexicans  were  in 
fear  of  all  immigrants.  Schemes  for  the  establishment 
of  a  French  settlement  in  Sonora,  whether  pushed  by 
mere  filibusters  like  Pindray  and  Raousset-Boulbon, 
or  more  peaceful  speculations  advocated  by  Jecker 
or  patronised  by  Napoleon  III.  during  the  Empire, 
were  equally  repugnant.  The  Mexicans  were  sus- 
picious of  all  "  gringos,"  and  were  persuaded  that 
these  intruders  meant  mischief  to  them.  They 
looked  with  hostility  on  the  pushful  newcomers,  as  did 
the  Gauchos  of  the  Argentine  Pampas  on  the  Euro- 
peans who  displaced  them  and  threatened  to  rob  them 
of  their  very  "  chiripas."  ^ 

Except  on  the  sea-coast  and  in  a  few  ports,  Mexico 
was  represented  in  the  great  belt  of  territory  which 
stretches  from  Lower  California  to  the  Atlantic  by  a 
sparse  population  of  herdsmen,  vagabond  seekers  for 
"  bonanzas,"  bits  of  luck  in  the  shape  of  pockets  of 
gold,  half-breeds,  and  broken  men.  In  1877  and  for 
some  years  afterwards  the  United  States  had  not 
subdued  their  own  territory  to  complete  order — and 
especially  not  in  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  which 
stand  over  against  Chihuahua  and  Coahuila.  Then 
the  half-breed  herdsmen  and  their  like  on  the  Mexican 
side  were  not  the  only  inhabitants.  Where  they  could 
not  occupy  the  land,  hunting  Indians  roamed,  or 
Pueblo  Indians  lived  their  old  communal  life.  In 
these  conditions  it  would  have  been  strange  if  the 
border  had  not  reproduced  all,  or  more  than  all,  that 
our   own    ancestors   knew   under   that   name.     The 

^  The  "  chlripd  "  is  the  shawl  which  the  riders  of  the  Pampas  wrap  round 
the  middle  of  the  body  as  a  protection  against  the  cutting  winds  from  the 
South  Pole.  An  odd  and  rather  indecent  story  has  been  invented  to  account 
for  an  article  of  dress  which  really  explains  itself. 


THE   FIRST  TERM  191 

Indian  tribes  on  the  northern  side  began  to  burst  into 
Mexico  as  they  felt  the  pressure  not  only  of  the  rifles, 
but  of  what  was  more  deadly  by  far  to  them,  the 
economic  conditions  created  for  them  by  the  ad- 
vancing whites  who  broke  up  or  enclosed  their  hunting- 
grounds  and  were  exterminating  the  bison.  From 
Mexico  as  from  a  place  of  refuge  they  raided  back  on 
the  enemy  who  had  starved  and  forced  them  out. 
The  unfailing  products  of  an  unsettled  border — the 
cattle-lifters,  half-breed,  and  white — could  not  be 
lacking.  In  fact  they  swarmed.  Most  troopers  are 
agreeably  picturesque  figures  on  the  pages  of  Sir 
Walter,  but  Willie  of  Westburnflat  or  the  Devil's 
Dick  of  Hellgarth  are  less  attractive  when  seen  in  their 
native  characters  of  cattle-lifter,  horse-thief,  fire- 
raiser,  blackmailer,  and  murderer. 

There  was  another  personage  at  work  who  had  been 
unknown  to  the  Middle  Ages — to  wit,  the  land  specu- 
lator. Northern  Mexico  was  the  country  of  the 
''  hacendados,"  the  great  landowners  whose  acres 
were  counted  by  the  million.  But  there  was  land  to 
sell,  and  it  will  occur  to  everybody  as  but  natural  that 
a  title  more  or  less  good  could  be  obtained  in  Mexico 
at  a  very  cheap  rate.  It  could  in  fact  be  acquired 
in  Mexico  for  a  few  cents  an  acre.  If  only  the  country 
could  be  transferred  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  United 
States  the  market  price  would  promptly  rise  to  the 
same  number  of  dollars.  Of  course  there  were  not  a 
few  holders  of  titles — Mexicans  too  in  many  cases — 
who  were  perfectly  ready  to  foment  any  disorder  in 
the  hope  that  the  United  States  might  be  tempted  or 
provoked  to  make  another  advance  and  annex  another 
belt  of  Mexican  territory.  The  change  of  sovereignty 
would  promptly  have  interpreted  itself  for  them  into 


192  DIAZ 

a  very  profitable  transaction.  Nor  was  there  wanting 
on  the  American  side  a  lively  desire  for  new  land  to  be 
settled,  or,  what  was  more  innocent,  for  the  greater 
security  which  would  come  of  the  presence  of  the 
United  States  cavalry  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rio 
Grande.  In  short,  pretext,  provocation,  speculation, 
and  the  just  resentment  of  the  Government  at 
Washington  might  combine  at  any  moment.  There- 
fore it  was  that  the  United  States  hung  over  Mexico 
like  an  impending  avalanche  or  landslip.  Indeed 
it  was  thought  that  but  for  the  firmness  of  President 
Hayes  the  whole  mass  would  have  been  precipitated 
during  Don  Porfirio's  first  Administration,  and  that, 
no  doubt,  was  one  main  reason  why  he  was  resolved, 
and  was  able,  to  bring  his  countrymen  to  pay  the 
$300,000  a  year  of  indemnity  according  to  the  terms 
of  the  award  of  1876. 

There  was,  however,  more  to  be  done.  If  the 
Mexicans  suffered  from  Indian  and  other  raiders  who 
came  across  the  border  from  the  American  side,  the 
citizens  of  the  United  States  lost  far  more  by  the 
raiders  who  came  from  the  south,  for  the  sufficient 
reason  that  they  had  incomparably  more  to  lose. 
Pursuit  of  the  offenders  was  useless  when  they  could 
take  refuge  across  a  border  and  could  not  be  followed. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  United  States 
would  have  wished  to  send  their  troops  across  the 
frontier  in  pursuit  of  Indian  or  half-breed  raiders  if 
the  Mexican  Government  would  have  maintained  a 
proper  ward  of  the  marches.  But  that  it  would  not 
and  could  not  do.  Like  other  Spanish  American 
communities,  it  was  far  too  ready  to  take  advan- 
tage of  its  own  wrong,  to  plead  that  because  it  was 
anarchical,  and  therefore  very  poor,  it  ought  not  to  be 


THE    FIRST  TERM  193 

summoned  to  perform^its  elementary  functions.  When 
it  was  shown  to  be  incompetent  to  the  injury  of  its 
neighbours,  it  stood  on  its  dignity.  When  during  the 
Administration  of  Juarez  it  was  asked  to  consent  to 
allow  American  troops  to  cross  the  frontier,  it  declined. 
The  American  Government  was  honourably  patient 
and  took  the  perfectly  fair  course  of  offering  reci- 
procity. Till  1 877  nothing  was  done.  In  the  confused 
condition  of  Mexico  in  these  years  it  was  often  not  as 
much  as  possible  to  say  who  was  the  Government,  or 
where  was  the  Government,  at  any  given  moment. 
In  1877,  just  when  Diaz  was  really  beginning  to  bring 
the  country  to  order,  the  condition  of  the  border, 
especially  where  it  marched  with  the  new  well- 
inhabited  and  prosperous  State  of  Texas,  had  reached 
a  point  where  the  sufferers  declared  that  the  nuisance 
was  no  longer  to  be  tolerated.  The  reputation  of  the 
Texans  is  that  not  very  much  is  required  to  bring  them 
to  the  fighting  pitch.  Some  among  them  by  general 
admission  were  on  the  same  moral  level  as  Mexican 
cattle-lifters.  Every  raider  was  not  born  south  of  the 
Rio  Grande.  There  were  some  who  had  first  crossed 
the  river  from  the  north,  and  to  whom  Mexican 
territory  served  as  a  no  man's  or  debatable  land, 
where  they  could  find  refuge.  But  that  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  that  the  Mexican  Government 
did  not  govern.  The  grievance  was  not  all  on  one 
side,  but  it  was  real,  and  it  was  worse  for  the  richer  of 
the  two  countries. 

In  June,  1877,  the  United  States  Government  gave 
instructions  to  General  Ord,  the  officer  commanding 
in  Texas,  to  cross  the  frontier  in  pursuit  of  Mexican 
marauders.  He  was,  however,  told  to  act  in  harmony 
with   the   local   authorities   and   to   ask   their   help. 

D.  O 


194  I^IAZ 

These  instructions  showed  a  desire  to  make  com- 
pHance  as  easy  for  the  Mexican  Government  as  the 
state  of  the  case  permitted.  None  the  less  the  advance 
of  the  American  troops  would  have  constituted  an 
invasion.  The  action  of  the  United  States,  or  rather 
the  threat  to  take  action,  created  a  serious  difficulty 
for  Diaz.  If  he  yielded,  he  would  have  discredited 
himself  in  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen,  and  then  some- 
body would  have  been  found  to  set  the  old  anarchy 
boiling  again.  If  he  had  taken  a  very  high  tone  with 
the  United  States,  he  might,  indeed  he  certainly 
would,  have  provoked  a  war  in  which  Mexico  would 
have  suffered  grievously.  No  such  result  was  desired 
on  either  side.  President  Diaz  took  a  line  which,  while 
satisfying  the  susceptibilities  of  his  countrymen,  was 
really  a  compliance  with  the  just  demands  of  the 
United  States.  He  sent  General  Trevino  to  the  fron- 
tier with  a  competent  body  of  troops  and  with  public 
orders  to  resist  General  Ord  by  force  if  he  advanced. 
It  was  generally  believed,  however, — and  the  opinion 
seems  a  plausible  one — that  General  Trevifio  was 
privately  instructed  not  to  be  officious  in  putting 
himself  in  the  way  of  the  American  general.  This 
measure  was  accompanied  by  a  vigorously-worded 
protest  against  the  proposed  action  of  the  United 
States  as  contrary  to  international  law.  But  the 
protest  was  followed  by  the  adoption  of  measures  to 
bring  the  border  to  quiet.  It  was  allowed  that  they 
were  effective  and  that  the  marauding  was  abated. 
It  is  not  rash  to  assume  that  General  Trevifio  and 
other  Mexican  officers,  acting  under  the  wholesome 
stimulant  applied  by  America,  administered  a  good 
deal  of  Jeddart  justice  and  Halifax  law  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  Rio  Grande. 


THE   FIRST  TERM  195 

The  trouble  did  not  cease,  for  it  arose  from  the 
natural  wealth   of   the   soil   in   such  growths.     But 
President  Diaz  convinced  the  United  States  that  he 
meant  well,  and  that  if  he  were  not  unduly  hampered 
he  would  do  better.     After  he  had  been  recognised  in 
April,  1878,  the  two  Governments  joined  to  provide 
a  remedy.     In  1880  the  States  asked  for  an  arrange- 
ment, regularly  recognised  and  recorded,  by  which 
their    troops    might    cross    the    line    in    pursuit    of 
marauders.     President  Diaz,  after  consulting  with  his 
Congress  (mainly,  one  imagines,  from  politeness  and 
for  form's  sake),  consented  to  a  treaty,  not,  however, 
signed  till  July  29,  1882,  when  he  was  not  in  office. 
By  this  treaty  the  regular  troops  of  each  Government 
were  to  be  authorised  to  cross  into  the  territory  of  the 
other  on  certain  conditions.     The  entry  must  not  be 
made  on  settled  land,  nor  go  within  six  miles  of  any 
settlement.     It  must  be  notified  at  once  to  the  local 
authorities,  and  the  pursuing  force  must  retire  when 
the  capture  was  effected  or  the  trail  was  lost.     Con- 
ventions of  this  kind  have  since  been  repeatedly  made 
and  renewed.     President  Diaz  had  secured  for  his 
country  equality  of  treatment,  though  it  was  not  he 
who  actually  signed  the  treaty  of  1882. 

The  line  adopted  by  the  two  Governments  was  the 
best  available,  but  it  is  obvious  that  there  was  a 
considerable  danger  in  such  reciprocity  as  this. 
When  one  side  was  impatient  and  perhaps  unduly 
scornful,  and  the  other  was  susceptible  and  not  without 
resentment,  collisions  were  not  unlikely  to  occur. 
One  did  in  1886.  An  American  officer.  Captain 
Crawford,  crossed  the  frontier  into  Chihuahua  on  a 
proper  occasion  with  a  few  United  States  soldiers  and 
a  large  proportion  of  Apache  scouts.     By  a  misfortune 

O    2 


196  DIAZ 

such  as  was  inherent  in  the  case,  a  body  of  the  Mexican 
Chihuahuan  guard  which  was  in  pursuit  of  other 
raiders  fell  in  with  Captain  Crawford's  detachment. 
Misled,  as  it  alleged,  by  the  sight  of  the  Apache  scouts, 
it  concluded  that  it  had  to  do  with  a  body  of  plunder- 
ing Indians.  It  attacked  and  Captain  Crawford  was 
killed.  The  incident  excited,  as  may  be  supposed, 
much  anger  in  the  United  States.  But  a  war  was  not 
desired,  and  Diaz,  who  was  now  back  in  the  Presi- 
dency, had  the  confidence  of  the  American  Govern- 
ment. It  recognised  that  Captain  Crawford  had  not 
observed  the  terms  of  the  treaty  with  exact  care.  He 
was  entitled  to  cross  the  frontier,  but  only  with  regular 
troops.  The  greater  part  of  his  command  consisted  of 
Apache  scouts  who  could  not  be  so  described.  The 
trouble  was  smoothed  over,  but  when  collisions  of 
this  character  were  likely  to  occur  vigilance  and  good- 
will must  have  been  taxed  on  both  sides  to  keep 
friendly  relations  from  being  broken. 

His  first  Administration  did  not  give  President 
Diaz  the  chance  of  putting  the  finances  of  Mexico  on 
a  better  footing.  He  was  indeed  tempted  to  do  them 
some  damage.  But  they  may  be  allowed  to  stand  for 
a  space  while  we  turn  to  his  struggle  with  the  condi- 
tions which  had  to  be  subdued  if  he  was  to  go  on  doing 
any  measure  of  good  on  any  side  of  Government. 

The  new  President  had  bound  himself  by  all  "  Plans  " 
issued  by  him — La  Noria,  Textupec,  and  Palo  Blanco 
— to  establish  the  rule  that  no  immediate  re-election 
for  the  Presidency  was  to  be  allowed  in  future.  And 
this  rule  was  to  apply  to  the  governors  of  the  States. 
He  had  also  bound  himself  tacitly  by  the  final  clause 
of  the  Plan  of  Palo  Blanco,  and  explicitly  by  definite 
promises  he  gave  in  a  public  letter  published  after 


THE   FIRST  TERM  igy 

his  return  to  the  capital  from  the  north  in  February, 
not  to  govern  with  or  for  one  party,  but  for  the  nation, 
and  with  the  help  of  men  of  all  parties  who  would 
frankly  give  their  aid.  Now  nothing  was  easier  than 
to  persuade  Congress  to  pass  a  nice  little  law  forbidding 
re-elections.  Laws  can  be  made  with  a  light  heart  in 
countries  where  they  are  but  little  respected.  Nobody 
in  Mexico  can  have  believed  sincerely  that  the  new 
constitutional  law  would  prove  to  have  more  virtue 
than  the  long  series  which  had  preceded  it.  But  to 
govern  without  strict  regard  to  party  was  by  no  manner 
of  means  so  easy,  for  it  implied  that  the  President 
must  disappoint  some  at  least  of  those  who  helped 
him  to  rise  to  power.  And  in  such  a  country  as  Mexico 
this  meant  that  the  disappointed  persons  would 
protest  with  the  use  of  force.  Then,  too,  a  patriot 
President  resolved  to  rule  free  from  the  bonds  of 
party  was  no  less  sure  to  offend  those  of  his  opponents 
who  would  be  content  with  nothing  less  than  all,  and 
it  was  a  matter  of  course  that  they  would  take  up 
arms.  President  Diaz  had  to  meet  trouble  from  both 
sides. 

Those  who  have  heard  how  he  gave  peace  to  Mexico 
may  be  surprised  to  be  told  that  there  was  no  year  of 
his  first  Administration  in  which  there  was  not  fighting 
somewhere.  But  a  year  of  peace  in  Mexico  was  one 
in  which  only  local  conflicts  occurred.  It  would  be  a 
wearisome  task  to  go  through  a  long  list  of  these 
scufflings  of  kites  and  crows.  Their  incidents  were 
monotonous  and  barren.  The  characters  of  the 
persons  concerned  were  of  the  poorest.  It  will  be 
enough  to  take  one  example  of  each  class  of  disturb- 
ance, the  explosion  of  disappointed  personal  ambition 
and  the  violent  outbreak  of  pure  insurrection. 


198  DIAZ 

General  Marquez  de  Leon — no  connection  with  the 
Marquez  who  was  Tiger  of  Tacubaya — had  been  one 
of  the  supporters  and  agents  of  General  Diaz  in  the 
north-west.  He  was  a  native  of  Lower  California. 
This  man  was  one  of  those  who  considered  that  the 
President  had  not  rewarded  his  services  as  they 
deserved.  He  was  of  course  intent  on  gaining  his 
revenge,  and  he  had  the  power  to  do  mischief.  In  the 
course  of  his  political  activities  in  previous  years  he 
had  acquired  a  useful  connection  in  the  State  of 
Sinaloa.  Sinaloa  is  the  State  which  lies  directly  south 
of  Sonora  on  the  Pacific  coast,  and  the  northern  end 
of  it  is  in  the  Gulf  of  California,  opposite  Marquez's 
native  State.  Having  connections  in  both,  it  was 
possible  for  him  to  combine  them.  And  he  was 
presented  with  an  opportunity  by  a  local  disturbance 
in  Sinaloa.  The  governor,  Caiiedo,  had  fallen  out 
with  his  fellow-Sinaloans  on  constitutional  points 
which  the  absence  of  evidence  makes  it  difficult  to 
master.  Judging  by  analogy,  we  may  conclude  that 
what  was  at  stake  was  the  control  of  the  spigot  of 
local  taxation.  "  Pronunciamiento  "  was  in  the  air, 
and  such  a  well-practised  wire-puller  as  Marquez  de 
Leon  was  had  no  great  difficulty  in  turning  a  local  riot 
into  a  general  rising.  The  immediate  command  in 
Sinaloa  was  given  by  him  to  one  Jesus  Ramirez,  who 
was  locally  popular.  He  himself  passed  into  Lower 
California.  During  the  whole  of  1879  and  much  of 
1880  these  two  were  engaged  in  keeping  up  the  banner 
of  revolt  by  "  several  pronunciamientos "  and 
"  opportune  seizures  of  funds,"  to  quote  the  demure 
prose  of  Mr.  H.  H.  Bancroft.  Skirmishes  occurred, 
repulses,  captures,  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  guerrillero- 
cum-hsindit  wars  proper  to  those  constitutional  con- 


THE   FIRST  TERM  199 

flicts.     At  last  Jesus  Ramirez  was  shot  in  a  skirmish 
by  Federal  troops,  and  Marquez  de  Leon,  finding  the 
game  was  going  against  him,  disbanded  his  men  and 
fled   to   the   United   States.     Meanwhile   there  were 
other  fights  for  freedom  in  the  same  or  very  similar 
conditions  going  on  in  other  parts  of  the  Republic. 
They  were  taken  as  matters  of  course  and  treated  as 
of  no  consequence.     In  the  address  to  Congress  at  the 
beginning   of   the   session    of    1879    President   Diaz 
referred  to  them  in  terms  which  show  how  calmly  a 
state  of  anarchy  in  solution  and  always  on  the  point 
of  precipitating  was  accepted  by  the  strongest  man  of 
government  in  Mexico  :   "  Some  events  have  occurred 
in  different  parts  of  the  country  of  which,  though  they 
have  provoked  transitory  confusion  and  local  diffi- 
culties, it  cannot  be  said  that  they  affect  the  general 
peace  of  the  Republic  or  menace  established  order." 
Each  by  itself  these  outbreaks  were  but  little  more 
dangerous   than  strike  riots.     The  wide  extension  of 
them  and  their  persistence  was  none  the  less  a  menace 
to  "  established  order,"  for  it  showed  that  anarchy 
was  bred  in  the  bone  of  the  Mexicans.     In  the  speech 
with  which  he  prorogued  the  Congress  in  September, 
President  Diaz  made  a  dry  and  laconic  reference  to 
another  manifestation  of  this  same  evil  which  had 
occurred  at  Veracruz.     It  was  the  event  to  which 
Senor  Fornaro  referred  in  the  screech  of  fury  quoted 
above  (see  p.  120).     It  was  far  too  characteristic  of 
the  country,  too  significant  of  the  conditions  with 
which  a  ruler  who  would  keep  order  has  to  deal,  and 
it  touches  the  personal  character  of  President  Diaz 
too  closely  to  be  lightly  dismissed. 

Our  story  has  already  shown  that  Veracruz  was  a 
point  of  peculiar  importance,  because  it  was  the  main 


200  DIAZ 

port  of  entry  for  Mexican  trade,  and  the  place  where 
the  bulk  of  the  customs  was  collected.  For  that 
reason  it  was  always  guarded  by  Government  with 
exceptional  care.  But  for  that  reason  also  the  seizure 
of  the  town  was  always  a  great  object  with  insurgents 
of  all  colours.  They  were  not  likely  to  forget  that 
Juarez  had  won  against  the  Conservatives  and 
Miramon  very  largely  because  he  had  been  able  to 
occupy  and  hold  the  port.  If  the  place  could  have 
been  captured  the  Government  would  have  found 
itself  deprived  of  funds  at  a  critical  moment.  There 
was  no  lack  of  intriguers  in  Mexico  who  were  capable 
of  making  this  simple  calculation.  Irreconcilable 
Lerdistas  were  ready  to  combine  with  disappointed 
agitators  of  the  stamp  of  Marquez  de  Leon.  In  the 
spring  of  1879  a  conspiracy  was  undoubtedly  on  foot. 
It  may  have  been  ineptly  contrived,  for  the  Lerdistas 
generally  were  clumsy  conspirators,  but  it  was 
genuine.  The  plan  was  to  bring  about  a  mutiny  in 
two  Government  gunboats  lying  near  Veracruz,  the 
Lihertad  and  the  Independencia,  and  then  act  in 
combination  with  Lerdista  conspirators  on  shore  who 
had  returned  secretly  from  their  exile  in  Texas.  The 
fighting  leader  was  to  be  Mariano  Escobedo,  a  veteran 
of  the  French  war,  and  he  had  with  him  "  some  colonels 
of  known  dash — Lorenzo  Fernandez,  Bonifacio  Topete, 
Carlos  Fuero,  Jose  B.  Cueto,  and  others."  There 
were  other  intriguers  of  the  wire-pulling  rather  than 
of  the  fighting  order  within  the  town. 

President  Diaz  was  too  well  aware  of  the  vital 
importance  of  keeping  a  tight  hold  on  the  place  to 
have  neglected  the  precaution  of  putting  it  in  safe 
hands.  The  governor  was  the  Luis  Mier  y  Teran  to 
whom  he  had  entrusted  the  command  of  his  following 


THE   FIRST  TERM  201 

in  Oaxaca  at  the  time  of  the  rising  against  Juarez. 
Teran  ^  had  gone  through  various  fortunes.  He  was 
a  prisoner  when  Lerdo  fled  from  Mexico,  and  it 
was  he  who  brought  the  news  of  the  flight  to  Diaz. 
He  was  devoted  to  Don  Porfirio.  Don  Rafael  de 
Zayas  describes  him  as  a  perfectly  illiterate  rough 
diamond  of  jovial  temperament  and  breezy  popularity 
hunting  manners.  He  was  commonly  known  as  El 
loco  Teran  (Rattlepate  Teran) — a  description  answer- 
ing to  our  "  good  old  So-and-so,"  and  implying  more 
condescending  approval  than  respect.  Perhaps  the 
reputation  of  the  man  as  a  kind  of  noisy  buffoon 
misled  the  conspirators  into  underrating  the  danger  of 
incurring  his  suspicions.  They  were  to  discover  that 
all  this  genial  hail-fellow-well-met  outside  covered  a 
capacity  to  be  ferocious  in  the  most  extreme  Mexican 
style. 

It  may  very  well  be  the  case  that  some  of  those 
engaged  in  this  particular  plot  entered  into  it  because 
they  found  conspiracy  almost  as  exciting  as  the 
gambling  for  which  most  Mexicans  have  a  furious 
passion.  Even  among  more  sober  peoples  men  have 
been  known  who  found  an  irresistible  attraction  in 
the  game  of  conspiracy.  The  French  Royalist  Hyde 
de  Neuville  tells  a  story  of  the  famous  Chouan,  George 
Cadoudal,  which  he  gives  as  being  by  no  means  an 
instance  of  idle  talk.  They  were  escaping  together  in 
an  open  boat,  and  were  on  their  way  across  Channel 

^  The  reader  may  perhaps  not  always  knovr  what  is  the  meaning  of  such 
a  name  as  Mier  y  Terin — that  is,  Mier  and  Terin.  The  second  surname 
is  that  of  the  mother.  Diaz  himself,  for  instance,  was  Diaz  y  Mori.  Whether 
the  two  names  are  habitually  used  depends  on  whether  they  are  easily 
pronounced  together  and  other  considerations,  such,  for  instance,  as  the 
convenience  of  being  able  to  distinguish  Seiior  Ramirez  y  Lopez  from  Seiior 
Ramirez  y  Sanchez.  A  man  sometimes  prefers  to  use  his  mother's  surname, 
and  this  was  the  case  with  Mier  y  Terin,  who  is  commonly  spoken  of  at 
Terin  only. 


202  DIAZ 

to  England.     In  the  middle  of  the  night  Cadoudal 
suddenly  asked  him  if  he  had  reflected  on  what  was 
the  first  thing  the  King  ought  to  do  when  he  was 
restored.     Then  he  supplied  the  answer.     It  was  to 
shoot  them   both,   for,   said   the   Chouan,   they  had 
become  so  wedded  to  this  kind  of  life  that  they  would 
never  be  able  to  lead  any  other.     And  Hyde  acknow- 
ledges that  the  humorous  judgment  of  George  had  a 
basis    of    truth.     There    were    certainly    not    a    few 
Mexicans  with  whom  plotting  and  "  pronunciamien- 
tos  "  had  become  a  habit.     They  followed  their  bent 
lightly  and  they  talked  too  much.     Teran  became 
aware  that  some  trouble  was  brewing  and  laid  hands 
on  one  of  the  "  characterised  "  members  of  Lerdo's 
party.     Martial   law   had    not    been    proclaimed    in 
Veracruz,  and  the  governor  thought  it  best  to  observe 
the  forms.     He  applied  to  Don  Rafael  de  Zayas,  who 
was  Federal  judge  of  Veracruz  at  the  time,  and  asked 
him  to  commit  other  prisoners.      Don  Rafael,  from 
whose  narrative  these  details  are  taken,  declined  to 
comply  with    the   governor's    request.      Teran   was 
angry,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  accuse  the  judge ^of 
tepidity  in  the  cause  of  public  order. 

The  arrest  of  the  "  caracterizado  "  may  perhaps 
have  stimulated  the  fighting  element  in  the  conspiracy 
to  immediate  action.  The  gunboats  which  were  to  be 
seized  were  lying,  not  in  the  poor  roadstead  of  Vera- 
cruz, but  at  Tlacotalpam  to  the  south-east,  where  the 
Papaloapam  and  the  Alvarado  rivers  run  together  and 
form  a  species  of  delta  and  a  lagoon.  The  anchorage 
is  connected  with  the  sea  by  a  narrow  passage.  The 
town  of  Alvarado  stands  on  the  north-west  side  of 
the  entrance  and  Tlacotalpam  on  the  inner  side  of 
the   lagoon.     The  proposed  coup  was  only  partially 


THE   FIRST  TERM  203 

successful,  but  the  Libertad  was  seized  during  the 
absence  of  her  captain,  who  was  ashore,  and  by  a 
party  from  Alvarado.  The  captors  made  off  with  her 
to  the  eastward  and  took  her  to  Carmen,  at  the  end 
of  the  Lagoon  de  Terminos  in  Yucatan.  Here  while 
the  leaders  of  the  plot  were  ashore  in  search  of 
"  fortunate  seizures  of  money  "  the  boatswain  and 
the  loyal  part  of  the  crew  retook  the  Libertad  and 
brought  her  back. 

In  the  meantime  Teran  had  been  promptly  in- 
formed of  the  seizure  of  the  Libertad.  He  telegraphed 
at  once  to  the  capital  for  orders  and  received  for  answer 
the  words  "  Fusilalos  en  caliente  "  ("  Shoot  them  hot 
and  hot,"  or  red-handed).  Teran  did  not  wait  for  a 
second  order,  but  at  once  shot  a  whole  batch  of  the 
Lerdistas  he  suspected,  and  buried  them  immediately. 
He  seems  himself  to  have  been  aware  that  this  sum- 
mary execution  would  be  blamed,  for  he  reported  to 
the  Government  that  an  attack  had  been  made  on  the 
barracks  at  Veracruz,  and  that  assailants  nine  in 
number  had  fallen  in  action.  In  view  of  what  fol- 
lowed it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  Teran  put  himself  to 
the  trouble  of  lying.  The  truth  was  notorious.  The 
execution  caused  more  excitement  than  might  have 
been  expected  in  a  country  where  shooting  of  prisoners 
had  been  so  common.  But  hitherto  the  firing  parties 
had  been  busy  with  the  officers  of  defeated  armies. 
In  this  case  those  who  had  suffered  belonged  to  families 
of  substance  and  to  the  class  which  had  kept  in  the 
background  to  pull  the  wires  and  work  revolutions 
for  their  money.  Their  families  insisted  that  an 
inquiry  should  be  held.  The  Government  was  slow 
to  meet  their  request,  but  at  last,  on  July  13,  some 
three   weeks   after   the   execution,   the   bodies   were 


204  DIAZ 

exhumed.  It  was  then  found  that  they  were  tied 
with  ropes,  which  of  course  showed  the  absolute 
falsity  of  Teran's  assertion  that  they  had  fallen  in 
open  fight. 

Having  obtained  this  amount  of  concession,  it 
would  have  been,  on  the  face  of  it,  easy,  one  would 
think,  for  the  families  to  force  the  Government  to 
bring  the  general  to  a  real  trial.  Yet  they  failed. 
It  is  true  that  he  was  brought  before  the  grand  jury 
in  the  capital  in  May,  1880,  and  that  his  case  was  put 
before  Congress  more  than  a  year  afterwards  in 
November,  1881,  when  the  President's  first  term  was 
over.  Both  bodies  declared  they  were  incompetent 
to  try  him.  He  was  never  punished  by  the  law. 
There  is  no  honest  reason  for  concealing  the  manifest 
truth  that  if  he  escaped  punishment  it  was  because 
Don  Porfirio  did  not  choose  to  allow  him  to  be 
punished.  But,  that  being  so,  we  naturally  wish  to 
understand  why,  in  spite  of  public  emotion  and 
newspaper  clamour,  the  President's  popularity  was 
not  in  the  least  diminished  by  an  act  for  which  he 
must  be  held  responsible,  and  which  was  as  savage  as 
any  recorded  in  Mexican  history. 

Writers  who  have  undertaken  to  draw  Diaz  as  of 
blameless  walk  and  conversation  according  to  an 
approved  European  model  have  passed  over  this 
episode  in  silence.  Others  who  wished  to  show  a 
certain  measure  of  independence  have  endeavoured 
to  prove  that  the  famous  "  Fusilalos  en  caliente  " 
only  meant  that  Teran  was  to  shoot  the  mutineers 
on  the  Libertad  if  he  could  catch  them  red-handed. 
This  is  the  kind  of  apology  for  which  no  human  being 
could  really  be  grateful.  It  endeavours  to  save  Don 
Porfirio's    moral   character    at    the    expense    of   his 


THE   FIRST  TERM  205 

common  sense.  If  that  was  what  he  meant  he  could 
easily  have  said  so  in  terms  which  could  not  be 
misunderstood.  He  knew  Teran  well.  His  telegram 
was  worded,  not  in  the  official  and  polite  third  person 
singular,  but  in  the  familiar  second,  which  is  never 
used  except  between  very  close  friends  or  relatives — 
"  fusilalos,"  not  "  fusilelos."  It  was  a  personal 
encouragement  from  one  old  friend  to  another  to  hit 
hard.  Knowing  the  man  as  he  did,  Diaz  must  have 
been  woefully  lacking  in  judgment  if  he  failed  to 
foresee  that  Teran  would  take  the  message  for  a 
direction  to  do  some  such  thing  as  he  did. 

There  are  only  two  ways  in  which  such  an  incident 
as  this  of  the  massacre  at  Veracruz  can  be  judged. 
Either  there  was  no  excuse  for  it,  or  it  needed  none, 
as  being  one  of  those  actions  not  laudable  in  them- 
selves, even  cruel,  which  were  none  the  less  done  for 
the  good  of  the  State.  If  Mexico  was  a  country  in 
which  the  Government  could  move  with  a  strict 
regard  to  law,  then  Teran  was  a  murderer,  and  Diaz, 
who  undeniably  aided  him  to  escape  punishment, 
abetted  the  murder.  But  if  Mexico  was  not  such  a 
country,  but  one  in  which  there  was  no  respect  for  the 
law,  and  where  many  men,  greedy,  self-seeking,  or 
feather-headed,  were  for  ever  trying  to  let  loose  the 
forces  of  anarchy  and  bloodshed  which  had  just  been 
chained  up,  then  there  was  no  murder  nor  abetting 
of  murder.  There  was  a  merciful  rigour  which  at  the 
expense  of  nine  lives  averted  far  greater  slaughter. 

The  fact  was  that  for  two  years  before  the  summary 
shooting  at  Veracruz  the  unhappy  country  had  been 
worried  by  local  outbreaks  and  raids  from  across  the 
frontier,  all  frivolously  undertaken,  all  ill-conducted, 
all  encouraged  underhand  by  wire-pullers  who  laid 


2o6  DIAZ 

plots  and  advanced  money.  Escobedo,  who  was  to 
have  co-operated  with  the  Veracruz  mutineers,  had 
been  taken  in  1877  and  had  been  allowed  to  go  free 
on  parole.  Yet  he  was  scheming  again.  If  the 
country  was  to  attain  to  a  lasting  peace  there  must 
be  an  end  of  this.  Since  moderation  and  persuasion 
could  not  bring  that  end  about  by  gentle  means,  then 
an  example  must  be  made.  The  people  who  intrigued 
between  four  walls,  found  money  and  pulled  wires, 
must  be  taught  that  there  was  some  danger  in  being 
too  busy.  They  were  taught  once  and  for  all.  It  is 
allowed  that  the  terror  produced  by  the  blow  struck 
at  Veracruz  was  profound  and  lasting — so  lasting 
that  it  was  felt  thirty  years  afterwards.  The  in- 
triguers realised  that  for  the  future  no  half-measures 
would  be  taken  with  them.  They  cowered  down, 
and  from  that  day  "  pacifism "  became  possible. 
Diaz  could  afford  to  be  moderate  because  the  dis- 
orderly elements  had  learnt  that  they  must  keep 
quiet. 

Yet  his  hand  was  always  heavy  on  recalcitrant 
minorities.  In  his  later  years  possible  competitors 
for  the  Presidency  used  to  vanish  into  prison,  and 
'did  not  always  come  out.  Governors  of  States  whom 
he  could  trust  were  kept  in  office  for  life  in  spite  of  the 
Constitution.  Only  a  blindly  obedient  servant  could 
hope  to  be  appointed  or  retained  as  "  gefe  politico  " 
of  a  district.  Spies  and  informers  were  used  without 
scruple. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


AN    INTERIM 


The  first  Administration  of  President  Diaz  was 
timed  to  end  in  November,  1880.  He  had  spent  the 
first  year  of  the  four  which  constituted  his  legal  term 
in  fighting  for  his  position.  The  three  which  followed 
were  spent  in  clearing  the  ground  and  in  laying  down 
the  lines  on  which  his  future  government  was  to  be 
conducted.  The  first  process  has  been  sufficiently 
illustrated  by  the  story  of  Marquez  de  Leon  and  the 
Veracruz  conspiracy.  But  it  is  necessary  for  the  full 
understanding  of  the  subject  to  add  that  the  President 
showed  a  most  consistent  determination  to  shake 
himself  free  of  all  bonds  of  party  or  connection  in  his 
choice  of  men  to  serve  the  State.  He  made  many 
changes  of  Ministers  and  he  took,  one  after  the  other, 
several  who  had  served  his  predecessors.  Ignacio 
Mariscal,  an  accomplished  diplomatist  and  linguist ; 
Rubio,  who  had  been  one  of  the  followers  of  Lerdo, 
and  had  fled  with  him  to  the  United  States  ;  Berrio- 
zabel,  who  had  been  Minister  of  War  with  Iglesias, 
and  others,  were  reconciled  to  the  new  ruler.  They 
were  joined  with  his  secretary,  Justo  Benitez,  with 
Gonzalez,  who  had  decided  the  day  at  Tecoac,  and 
other  Porforistas  of  the  early  times.  By  this  policy 
of  judicious  selection  the  President  gained  a  double 
advantage.  He  provided  himself  with  a  staff  of 
capable  agents,  and  he  deprived  other  parties  and 
connections  of  their  ablest  leaders.     In  his  case,  as 


2o8  DIAZ 

in  that  of  all  men,  death  of  others  and  mistakes  of 
rivals  had  helped  him  to  fortune.  Juarez  was  gone  ; 
Lerdo  had  made  himself  odious  ;  Iglesias  had  taken 
no  hold.  No  one  else  rose  above  the  crowd  sufh- 
ciently  to  counterbalance  his  popularity.  But  of 
him  also  the  maxim  Faher  fortunce  quisque  suce  holds 
good.  He  had  known  how  to  take  advantage  of  the 
chances  which  fortune  put  in  his  way.  And  as  he 
rose  step  by  step  he  persuaded  an  ever-increasing 
number  of  those  Mexicans  whose  support  was  valuable, 
and,  what  was  quite  as  much  to  the  purpose,  of  those 
foreigners  whose  aid  was  needed  by  every  Mexican 
ruler,  that  their  interests  were  safer  with  him  than 
with  any  other.  The  Mexicans  were  those  who 
longed  for  peace  and  an  opportunity  to  attain  to 
prosperity.  The  foreigners  were  capitalists  whose 
financial  aid  was  indispensable  in  so  poor  a  country, 
and  one  where  so  much  was  to  be  done  in  the  way  of 
public  works. 

When  we  inquire  what  it  was  that  the  President 
aimed  at  above  all  else  during  his  tenures  of  the 
Presidency  we  cannot  hope  to  find  an  answer  more 
conveniently,  or  in  more  satisfactory  form,  than  in  the 
pages  of  the  two  volumes  somewhat  largely  named 
"  The  Authentic  History  of  the  Administration  of 
General  Diaz."  The  licentiate  Ricardo  Rodriguez, 
who  published  this  compilation  in  1904,  went  too  far 
when  he  called  it  a  history.  It  is  a  collection  of  the 
speeches  which  the  President  made  at  the  opening  and 
prorogation  of  Congress  at  the  beginning  of  every 
April  and  in  the  middle  of  the  following  September 
of  each  year.  These  "  discursos  "  are  akin  to  the 
messages  of  the  Presidents  of  the  United  States, 
though  they  are  never  framed  on  the  same  ample 


AN   INTERIM  209 

scale.  They  show  every  sign  of  being  the  President's 
personal  work,  if  only  because  of  the  great  similarity 
of  their  style  to  that  of  the  biographical  notes  from 
which  quotations  have  been  made  above.  Like  these 
notes,  the  speeches  are  singularly  free  from  the  faults 
of  garrulity  and  mere  rhetoric  which  are  so  commonly 
to  be  found  in  Spanish  and  Spanish-American  political 
oratory.  The  President  tells  Congress  what  is  to  be 
done,  what  has  been  done,  or  what  it  would  be 
desirable  to  do,  in  plain,  straightforward  sentences, 
unhampered  by  involved  parenthetical  clauses  and 
inter-locked  gerunds  in  *'  ando  "  and  "  iendo."  The 
style  we  know  is  the  man,  and  it  is  part  of  the  biography 
of  Porfirio  Diaz  that  he  was  silently  contemptuous  of 
formulas  and  that  his  mind  went  directly  to  things, 
and  to  the  work  which  the  eye  can  see  and  the  hand 
touch.  Though  he  was  neither  a  man  of  letters,  nor 
desirous  to  be  one,  he  by  mere  virtue  of  clearness  of 
head  and  directness  of  mental  aim,  did  not  seldom 
attain  to  command  of  the  well-knit  short  sentence  and 
the  alert  prose  of  the  Spanish  writers  of  the  good 
epoch.  He  was  not,  to  be  sure,  Mariana,  nor  Lope  de 
Vega,  whose  prose  was  an  example  to  Europe,  but  he 
can  stand  with  the  explorers  and  the  captains  of 
Charles  V.  and  Philip  II.,  who  were  both  manly  and 
sober. 

Now  when  we  look  at  the  matter  of  these  speeches 
we  find  that  what  predominates  is  public  works. 
Other  things  are  there,  the  advantage  of  getting  rid  of 
the  abuses  which  had  grown  from  the  old  practice  of 
farming  the  Mint  and  of  the  destructive  form  of  tax 
named  "  Alcabala,"  and  so  on;  but  in  the  main  the 
President  presses  on  the  attention  of  Congress  such 
substantial    things    as    railways,    roads,    drainage, 


210  DIAZ 

bridges,  afforestation,  the  dredging  and  construction 
of  ports — in  short,  the  equipment  of  tools  without 
which  no  country  can  make  use  of  its  resources.  And, 
as  this  was  what  the  peaceful  and  industrially  inclined 
part  of  the  population  of  Mexico  knew  to  be  most 
necessary,  the  prominence  the  President  gave  it  in 
all  his  measures  and  speeches  tended  to  root  the  con- 
fidence felt  in  him  more  deeply. 

Yet  his  first  term  of  office  could  see  only  the  promise, 
or  at  the  utmost  the  beginning,  of  the  good  work,  and 
in  Mexico  there  was  then,  and  we  now  see  that  there 
still  is,  but  the  poorest  of  security  for  the  continuance 
of  any  good  work  apart  from  the  personality  of  the 
dominant  administrator. 

This  serious  consideration  was  in  fact  forcing  itself 
into  the  minds  of  a  good  many  Mexicans  by  the  year 
1880.  In  1877  Congress  had  embodied  the  great 
principle  of  the  "  Plans ''  published  by  Diaz  himself 
at  various  times  and  at  La  Noria,  Textupec,  or  Palo 
Blanco  in  a  law.  It  had  then  provided,  as  far  as  the 
law  could,  that  no  President,  nor  governor  of  a  State, 
could  be  re-elected  at  the  conclusion  of  his  term  of 
office.  Such  re-election  was,  it  seems,  contrary  to 
democratic  principles.  The  President  or  governor 
must  retire  and  wait  his  turn.  He  was  not  dis- 
qualified for  ever,  but  his  terms  of  office  must  not  be 
consecutive.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  in  the  act  of 
making  this  law  the  Congress  assumed  that  elections 
for  President  and  governor  were  formalities  in 
Mexico,  or  else  that  it  tacitly  confessed  that  the  people 
did  not  consider  re-election  undemocratic.  If  the 
sovereign  people  did  hold  that  faith  and  was  free  to 
choose,  what  compelled  it  to  re-elect  any  man  ?  But 
Congress  knew  very  well  that  elections  were  mere 


AN   INTERIM  211 

matters  of  form,  and  that  such  words  as  "  elector," 
"  voter,"  "  sovereignty  of  the  people,"  "  democratic," 
and  so  forth,  had  no  meaning  for  the  huge  majority 
of  Mexicans.  They  stood  for  institutions  and  ideas 
borrowed  from  abroad,  and  applied  to  Creoles,  half- 
breeds,  and  Indians,  to  whom  they  were  completely 
aHen,  and  with  whose  real  sentiments  they  had  no 
sort  of  organic  connection.  They  made  a  mere  mask 
which  in  moments  of  passion  or  sincere  emotion  was 
thrown  aside  as  artificial  and  as  useless.  The  law  of 
1877  was  simply  one  of  many  other  attempts  to 
provide  a  paper-barrier  which  should  restrain  the 
actual  tenant  of  office  from  turning  himself  into  a 
tyrant  in  the  proper  force  of  the  term.  A  really 
beneficent  ruler  was  the  most  dangerous  of  all 
"  tyrants  "  in  that  sense.  He  was  exactly  the  man 
who  was  least  likely  to  be  met  with  opposition  when 
he  took  measures  to  perpetuate  himself  in  office,  and 
thereby  to  block  the  road  to  those  who  wished  to 
enjoy  their  turn.  How  far  Diaz  did  at  any  period 
of  his  life  believe  that  a  mere  Congress-made  rule  of 
this  kind  would  prove  to  possess  any  virtue  of  its  own 
is  a  question  which  he  might  himself  have  found  it 
difficult  to  answer  in  his  later  years. 

Before  his  first  term  was  over  he  must  have  learnt 
that  there  were  many  in  Mexico  who  would  have  been 
glad  enough  to  see  the  Congress  undo  in  1880  what  it 
had  done  in  1877.  If  Diaz  had  lent  himself  to  their 
wishes  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Legislature 
would  have  done  as  it  was  told,  and  that  he  would 
have  been  re-elected  at  once.  But  the  law  had  been 
so  recently  passed,  and  Diaz  had  so  repeatedly 
declared  against  "  the  principle  of  re-election,"  that 
he  would  have  discredited  himself,  if  not  in  Mexico, 

P   2 


212  DIAZ 

where  declarations  for  or  against  principles  had  never 
had  much  meaning  and  had  come  to  have  none,  then 
at  least  in  the  United  States.  Moreover,  as  we  shall 
see,  it  was  not  absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  retain 
office  in  order  to  keep  control  of  affairs. 

It  is  a  truth  which  if  men  were  not  in  practice  so 
blind  to  it  would  be  a  platitude,  that  in  politics  no 
paper  Constitutions,  or  other  constructions  of  words 
printed  and  called  laws,  are  of  the  slightest  avail 
against  the  facts  of  the  case.  Power  in  Spanish 
America  has  resided,  resides,  and  will  continue  for 
long  to  reside,  in  some  person  or  connection  of  private 
persons  who  can  coerce  rivals  by  armed  force.  Their 
power  is  personal,  however  it  is  obtained,  and  it  either 
overrides  Constitutions  or  finds  some  way  of  evading 
them.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a 
reality,  and  the  American  people  has  an  inherited 
respect  for  law.  Yet  we  know  what  has  become  of 
the  attempt  made  by  the  fathers  of  the  Republic  to 
arrange  for  the  choice  of  a  President  by  a  process  of 
double  elections.  The  constitutional  law  made  by 
the  Mexican  Congress  in  1877  has  had  the  same  fate. 
It  was  one  of  many  made  in  Spanish  America  to  pre- 
vent any  particular  man  from  perpetuating  himself 
in  office,  and  they  have  always  proved  equally  futile. 
When  they  have  not  been  set  aside  by  force  a  coach 
and  four  has  been  driven  through  them. 

The  first  of  the  two  processes  needs  no  explanation, 
but  a  few  words  will  not  be  wasted  in  accounting  for 
the  second.  They  are  in  fact  necessary  in  order  to 
render  the  next  stage  in  the  life  of  Porfirio  Diaz 
intelligible. 

We  have  within  the  last  few  years  become  acquainted 
with  the  political  term  "  rotative."     It  came  from 


AN   INTERIM  213 

Portugal,  where  it  seems  to  have  been  invented,  but 
the  thing  is  common  to  the  whole  Iberian  peninsula 
and  its  colonies,  and  is  also  ancient.  Don  Rafael 
Altamira,  the  most  learned  of  contemporary  Spanish 
historians,  has  found  traces  of  it  in  Biscay  and  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  It  is  simply  an  arrangement  by  which 
two  persons  or  connections  agree  to  "  rotate "  in 
office.  The  reader  must  not  be  misled  by  memories 
of  Republicans  and  Democrats,  Whigs  and  Tories, 
Liberals  and  Conservatives,  when  considering  this 
Iberian  institution.  There  is  no  question  here  of  an 
appeal  to  the  country  with  or  without  a  dissolution,  of 
a  victory  of  a  party  at  the  polls,  and  of  a  transfer  of 
office  from  a  defeated  to  a  victorious  side.  The 
election  is  always  made  by  the  politician  in  office  as 
an  alternative  to  the  more  destructive,  and  not  less 
corrupt,  method  of  calling  the  troops  into  the  streets 
and  the  guerrilleros  to  the  hillsides.  We  may  say 
that  it  marks  a  distinct  progress  from  a  state  of 
anarchy  to  one  of  constitutional  order.  The  rotative 
system  was  highly  developed  in  Spain,  and  worked, 
on  the  whole,  well  during  the  reign  of  Alfonso  XII 
and  the  regency  of  the  queen-mother  Maria  Cristina. 
Don  Antonio  Canovas  went  out  and  Don  Mateo 
Praxedes  Sagasta  came  in.  Then  Don  Mateo  went  out 
and  Don  Antonio  came  in.  In  every  case  the  incoming 
Minister  "  made  "  his  own  Cortes,  care  being  taken 
that  the  "  outs "  should  be  allowed  a  becoming 
proportion  of  seats. 

Wherever  a  Spanish-American  republic  has  attained 
to  a  state  of  peace  it  has  been  by  the  adoption  of  a 
rotative  system.  Absolute  smoothness  of  working  is 
perhaps  not  to  be  looked  for.  The  outgoing  connec- 
tion may  find  the  door  effectually  locked  behind  it  by 


214  DIAZ 

the  rotators  in  office  who  will  not  keep  to  the  spirit  of 
the  bargain  ;  or,  again,  the  "  ins  "  may  try  to  lock 
the  door  and  fail.  In  either  case  there  is  trouble  and 
a  reversion  to  the  old  rough  method  of  "  pronuncia- 
miento."  But  in  many  cases  the  arrangement 
works.  The  President  whose  term  is  drawing  to  an 
end,  and  who  is  forbidden  by  the  Constitution  to 
seek  for  immediate  re-election,  selects  a  safe  man  to 
succeed  him.  He  superintends  the  election  and  gives 
his  personal  support  to  his  friend.  Four  years  later 
the  parts  are  reversed.  Guzman  Blanco  brought  this 
essentially  Iberian  adaptation  of  constitutional 
government  to  great  perfection  in  the  Republic  of 
Colombia.  With  or  without  the  guidance  of  his 
example,  and  perhaps  by  the  light  of  his  own  sagacity 
and  that  of  his  advisers  only,  Diaz  prepared  to 
perpetuate  his  personal  influence  and  to  prepare  his 
own  return  to  the  Presidency  at  the  end  of  four  years 
by  a  rotative  arrangement.  A  safe  man  was  to  be 
chosen,  and  to  him  was  to  be  entrusted  the  duty  of 
continuing  the  work  begun,  on  the  distinct  under- 
standing that  he  would  repay  the  service  when  the 
time  came  to  clear  off  the  debt. 

The  choice  of  a  trustworthy  locum  tenens  presented 
difficulties.  The  best  associate  would  be  one  who 
would  carry  out  the  bargain  in  the  letter  and  the 
spirit  of  his  own  free  will  and  mere  motion.  But  such 
perfect  harmony  of  brotherhood  was  hard  to  find. 
The  next  best  resource  was  someone  who  would  not 
be  able  to  break  the  bond  if  he  should  be  tempted  to 
play  false.  He  must  be  one  who  had  no  dangerous 
amount  of  popularity  and  influence  of  his  own.  Yet  a 
mere  figurehead,  a  mere  nonentity  would  not  suffice. 
Diaz  wished  to  serve  the  interests  of  his  country  too 


AN   INTERIM  215 

honestly  to  be  prepared  to  leave  them  at  the  mercy  of 
a  bungler,  simply  in  order  to  smooth  the  way  for  his 
own  return  to  office  by  showing  that  he  was  indis- 
pensable. The  President  for  the  next  four  years  must 
in  fact  be  qualified  to  allow  good  work  to  go  on,  and 
yet  not  quite  equal  to  making  an  independent  position 
for  himself.  Tact  and  insight  were  much  needed  for 
the  task  of  selecting  "  a  safe  man." 

Those  who  profess  to  have  been  well-informed 
affirm  that  the  President  began  by  making  choice  of 
his  secretary,  Don  Justo  Benitez.  They  had  fought 
together  in  the  dark  days  of  the  French  invasion. 
Benitez  had  worked  hard  for  his  chief  during  the 
struggle  with  Lerdo.  It  is  true  that  he  had  not  always 
avoided  giving  offence  in  quarters  where  Diaz  looked 
for  support.  But  he  had  been  loyal,  and  the  very 
fact  that  he  had  committed  errors  of  management  in 
dealing  with  persons  tended  on  the  whole  to  show 
that  he  would  not  be  a  dangerous  substitute.  So  he 
was  chosen,  and  in  order  that  he  might  be  put  in  a 
position  of  sufficient  prominence  to  appear  worthy  of 
the  Presidency  he  was  to  be  sent  on  a  mission  to 
Europe.  But  Don  Justo  broke  down  under  the  test. 
A  lively  French  contemporary  who  was  employed  to 
negotiate  with  Wolsey  has  recorded  that  the  cardinal 
began  by  saying  "  The  King."  Then  he  said  "  The 
King  and  I,"  then  the  formula  became  "  I  and  the 
King,"  till  at  last  he  took  to  using  the  bald  first 
personal  pronoun.  Don  Justo  had  no  doubt  heard 
persons  of  insight  say  that  he  was  the  "  intelligent 
soul,"  the  alma  pensante  of  his  chief,  and  had  come  to 
look  upon  himself  in  that  light.  He  soon  showed 
too  much  independence,  and  spoke  too  much  in  the 
ego  et  Rex  mens  tone.     Such  haste  in  claiming  the 


2i6  DIAZ 

first  place  was  a  warning  and  Don  Justo  was  dropped. 
Then,  so  it  is  said,  President  Diaz's  thoughts  turned  to 
Teran.     But  the  outcry  raised  over  the  general's  fierce 
dealings  with  the  Veracruz  conspirators  rendered  him 
dangerous  as  a  locum  tenens.    The  President  did  indeed 
prove  that  he  would  not  allow  the  general  to  suffer  for 
displaying  excess  of  zeal  in  carrying  out  the  order 
"  Fusilalos  en  caliente  " — if  excess  of  zeal  there  had 
been.     But  he  could  not  take  too  much  of  Teran's 
unpopularity  with  some  of  the  Mexicans  on  his  own 
shoulders  while  the  scandal  was  fresh,  and  attempts  to 
bring  the  general  to  a  genuine  trial  were  still  being  made. 
Whatever  the  true  truth  as  to  the  tentative  selec- 
tions may  be,  we  know  that  the  candidate  finally 
chosen  was  Don  Manuel  Gonzalez.     He  was  the  general 
to  whom  the  President  had  entrusted  the  command 
of  the  infantry  of  his  army  during  the  struggle  with 
Lerdo  in  the  north.      His  timely  appearance  on  the 
right  flank  of  Alatorre's  line  had  decided  the  battle 
at  Tecoac.     He  had  been  for  a  time  Minister  of  War 
for  Diaz.     The  President  could  rely  on  his  loyalty,  and 
his  position  was  such  as  to  justify  his  candidature. 
The  election  was  held  and  passed  off  peacefully  because 
Diaz  kept  order,  and  also  because  four  other  candi- 
dates, one  of  whom  was  Justo  Benitez,  were  allowed 
to  canvass  freely  and  to  receive  a  decent  show  of 
support.     But   the   influence   of   the    President   was 
thrown  openly  on  the   side    of    Gonzalez,  who  was 
elected    by    an    immense    majority.     The    Congress 
declared  him  duly  returned  on  September  25,  and  he 
entered  on  his  term  of  office  on  December  i,  1880.     In 
the  speech  which  closed  the  session  of  that  year  Diaz 
congratulated  Congress  on  the  good  order  which  had 
reigned  during  an  election,  though  the  public  had  taken 


AN   INTERIM  217 

unusual  interest  in  the  contest.  All  constitutional 
government  requires  the  aid  of  fictions,  and  Mexico 
has  its  own. 

The  real  character  of  the  transaction  is  sufficiently- 
displayed  by  a  single  fact.  Diaz  offered  his  active 
support  to  the  new  Administration,  and  was  invited  by 
his  successor  to  take  a  portfolio  in  the  new  Cabinet. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he  took  the  depart- 
ment of  Public  Works.  In  that  office  he  was  able  to 
apply  himself  to  what  was  of  most  interest  to  him, 
while  keeping  a  watch  over  the  whole  administration. 
He  showed  himself  particularly  attentive  to  the  new 
harbour  and  railway  works  at  Tampico.  They  were 
not  without  a  certain  political  interest.  The  Gulf 
coast  of  Mexico  is  ill-provided  with  ports.  Hitherto 
the  interior  tableland  had  been  wholly  dependent  on 
Veracruz,  which  is  but  a  narrow  anchorage  between 
the  rocky  little  island  of  San  Juan  de  Ulloa  and  the 
mainland,  and  the  route  inland  has  to  climb  a  very 
steep  ascent.  Tampico  lies  to  the  north  by  west  of 
Veracruz  at  the  mouth  of  the  Panuco  River,  which  is 
navigable  for  a  short  distance,  and  close  to  the  lagoon 
of  Tamaulipas.  It  is  just  at  the  southern  point  of  the 
State  of  that  name.  The  natural  harbour  is  not  a 
good  one  for  large  ships,  but  it  is  on  the  whole  better 
than  Veracruz.  By  improving  the  port  and  connect- 
ing it  with  the  capital  the  Central  Government  would 
free  itself  from  the  dangerous  old  dependence  on  what 
had  been  the  sole  outlet  and  entry  place  for  trade. 
We  can  therefore  easily  understand  why  Don  Porfirio, 
who  looked  forward  to  his  own  return  to  office,  should 
have  shown  a  special  desire  to  forward  the  works.  In 
fact,  the  whole  question  of  "  works  "  was  becoming 
predominant  in  Mexico,  and  whoever  had  the  general 


21 8  DIAZ 

direction  of  them  stood  fair  to  be  the  most  important 
man  in  the  country. 

Though  the  statement  may  appear  to  be  rather  in 
contradiction  with  what  has  been  said  above,  it  was 
probably  the  very  importance  of  the  post  which 
induced  Diaz  to  retire  from  the  Ministry  at  the  end  of 
a  year.  He  gave  as  his  reason  for  withdrawal — and  it 
must  be  allowed  that  it  was  a  plausible  one — that  he 
found  some  of  his  colleagues  were  of  opinion  that  he 
overshadowed  them.  They  were  certainly  not  wrong, 
and  it  must  be  allowed  that  his  presence  in  the 
Cabinet  was  too  well  calculated  to  emphasise  the  real 
nature  of  his  relations  to  the  new  President.  The 
general  rule  in  Spanish  America  is  that  the  outgoing 
rotator  pays  a  visit  to  Paris.  The  sailors  have  a 
saying  that  an  old  mainstay  makes  a  bad  foresheet. 
A  man  who  has  once  been  skipper  is  an  uneasy  first 
mate,  and  that  is  particularly  likely  to  be  the  case 
when  there  is  an  understanding  that  he  is  to  resume 
command  of  the  ship  in  the  future.  Diaz  must  have 
felt  himself  awkwardly  placed  before  the  year  was 
out ;  and  moreover  he  must  have  foreseen  coming 
trouble  arising  out  of  this  same  question  of  works.  He 
was  to  have  his  hands  free  of  it.  The  story  may  be 
left  till  it  can  be  treated  as  a  whole.  In  the  meantime 
Diaz  withdrew  from  the  Cabinet  and  returned  to  his 
native  Oaxaca,  where  no  doubt  by  previous  arrange- 
ment he  took  up  the  governorship. 

Oaxaca,  as  we  know,  was  not  only  the  State  to  which 
he  belonged  by  birth,  but  it  was  that  one  wherein  he 
had  been  "  cacique."  Influence  there  had  been  the 
foundation  of  his  power.  Of  late  he  had  not  seen 
much  of  his  home,  but  the  time  might  be  at  hand  when 
he  would  need  Oaxaca  again.     The  laws  of  1877  had 


AN   INTERIM  219 

limited  a  State  governor's  tenure  of  office  to  a  year. 
Diaz,  as  was  usual  with  him,  played  the  game  strictly. 
He  spent  twelve  months  on  the  Administration  of 
Oaxaca,  which  had,  as  can  easily  be  believed,  fallen 
into  considerable  confusion  since  he  issued  the  Plan 
of  Textupec.  The  question  of  works  followed  him 
here,  and  his  tenure  of  the  governorship  was  made 
notable  by  strenuous  efforts  to  promote  the  construc- 
tion of  the  railway  across  the  isthmus  of  Tehuantepec 
from  Santa  Cruz  on  the  Pacific  to  the  port  with  the 
rather  unmanageable  Indian  name  Coatzacoalcos  on 
the  Bay  of  Campeachy.  Coatzacoalcos  was  officially 
deposed  in  favour  of  the  easier,  if  less  characteristic 
and  sonorous,  Port  Mexico.  When  his  twelve  months 
were  over  he  returned  to  the  capital,  and  took  up 
his  residence  in  Humbolt  Street,  in  a  house  which 
became  his  own  and  was  afterwards  occupied  by  his 
son  Felix. 

For  a  short  time,  and  in  so  far  as  retirement  was 
possible  for  one  who  was  known  to  be  about  to  resume 
the  Presidency,  he  lived  apart  from  politics.  But  the 
interval  was  filled  for  him  by  an  event  of  the  first 
consequence  for  his  future  life.  He  had  become  a 
widower  during  his  first  term  of  office.  We  know 
little  of  the  lady  whom  he  married  during  the  siege  of 
Mexico.  But  the  second  Senora  de  Diaz  was  to  be 
almost  as  conspicuous  a  figure  of  the  political  and 
social  life  of  the  country  as  her  husband.  A  certain 
reserve  must  be  used  in  speaking  of  a  lady  who  is  still 
alive,  even  when  there  is  nothing  but  good  to  be  said. 
The  facts  which  can  be  mentioned  without  risk  of 
intrusion  are  that  his  second  wife  was  much  younger 
than  himself  and  was  by  birth  a  lady  who  had  received 
and  had  profited  by  a  more  serious  education  than  has 


220  DIAZ 

usually  been  given  to  the  daughters  of  Creole  families. 
Dona  Maria  del  Carmen  Romero  Rubio  was  the 
daughter  of  Don  Manuel  Romero  Rubio,  who  had  been 
one  of  the  Ministers  of  Don  Sebastian  Lerdo/  had  gone 
into  exile  with  him  and  had  returned.  He  was  after- 
wards one  of  Don  Porfirio's  Ministers. 

La  Sefiora  de  Diaz  (for  why  should  we  say  Mme. 
Diaz  ?)  has  confided  to  Mrs.  Tweedie  that  she  had  had 
a  girlish  admiration  for  Don  Porfirio,  and  had,  in 
fact,  regarded  him  with  the  sentiments  which  Desde- 
mona  felt  for  Othello.  The  President  who  had  been 
and  was  to  be  was  nowise  insensible  to  a  homage 
which  we  are  given  to  understand  was  not  disguised. 
His  attentions — so  his  biographer,  Seiior  Godoy, 
records — ^were  noted  in  Mexican  society.  Nobody 
was  surprised  when  his  marriage  was  announced  and 
took  place  in  November,  1882.  It  was  a  happy  one 
in  private  and  public  ways  alike.  Don  Porfirio  never 
showed  the  least  tendency  to  fall  into  the  folly  of  some 
of  his  predecessors  who  tried  to  surround  themselves 
with  a  sham  court.  He  maintained  a  "  republican 
simplicity  "  of  life.  But  there  is  room  in  the  simplest 
life  for  dignity  and  good  breeding.  Indeed,  there  is  none 
in  which  those  qualities  can  be  shown  with  greater 
merit.      To   dress  richly  and  well  is  comparatively 

^  Spanish  feminine  names  are  not  always  clearly  understood  by  us,  and  a 
few  words  on  the  subject  may  not  be  amiss.  The  full  married  name  of  the 
President's  wife  would  be  Maria  del  Carmen  Romero  Rubio  de  Diaz.  In 
social  life  the  full  name  is  reduced  to  Carmen  de  Diaz.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
every  Spanish  woman  is  baptised  by  the  name  of  Mary,  though  she  may 
have  and  may  prefer  to  use  another  Christian  name — or  font  name,  "  nombre 
de  pila."  But  it  is  usual  not  to  give  the  mere  name  Maria.  One  of  the 
personifications,  or  attributes,  or  qualifications  of  the  Virgin  is  added  : 
"  Maria  del  Carmen,"  "  Maria  de  los  Dolores,"  "  Maria  de  la  Concepcion," 
*'  Maria  de  la  Incarnacion,"  "  Maria  de  la  Asuncion,"  "  Maria  de  las  Nieves," 
or  local  virgins,  as  "Maria  del  Pilar,"  "  Maria  de  Guadalupe,"  "Maria  de  la 
Pena  de  Francia,"  and  many  others.  Some  of  them  have  familiar  abbrevia- 
tions— "  Concha,"  for  Concepcion,  or  "  Blanca,"  for  Nieves  ("  the  Snows  "). 


AN  INTERIM  221 

easy.  To  dress  very  simply  and  very  well  is  a  test 
of  good  taste.  It  was  part  of  the  exceptional  position 
which  President  Diaz  took  among  Spanish-American 
rulers  that  his  household  was  presided  over  by  a  lady 
who  would  have  been  at  home  in  the  society  of  a  great 
European  capital.  The  education  of  women  in  the 
different  Spanish-speaking  communities  has  a  ten- 
dency to  develop  a  somewhat  narrow  form  of  piety 
which  shows  itself  in  an  excessive  deference  to  the 
clergy.  Whatever  the  opinions  of  the  master  of  the 
house  may  be — and  in  the  educated  class  they  are 
generally  those  of  indifference  to  religion — the  wife  is, 
except  in  rare  cases,  a  "  clerical."  It  is  believed  that 
the  education  of  La  Senora  de  Diaz  had  been  of  a 
kind  to  save  her  husband  from  this  source  of  lack  of 
sympathy. 

Shortly  after  his  second  marriage  General  Diaz 
enjoyed  the  only  visit  to  a  foreign  country  which  he 
was  able  to  make  as  a  pure  holiday  in  his  life.  It  was 
certainly  not  for  mere  reasons  of  convenience,  nor  of 
economy,  that  he  went  to  the  United  States.  It 
would  have  been  at  least  as  easy  for  him  to  have 
crossed  the  Atlantic  to  Paris.  But  the  city  which  has 
so  strong  an  attraction  for  most  Spanish-Americans 
did  not  draw  him.  Even  on  a  honeymoon  he 
obviously  did  not  forget  that  the  Union  is  far  more 
important  to  Mexico  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 
We  may  take  it  for  granted  that  he  was  in  search  of 
more  than  rest  and  amusement,  that  he  wished  to  see 
and  become  known  to  the  influential  people  in  a 
country  with  which  he  was  to  have  close  relations. 
General  Grant  visited  Mexico  in  1880.  He  did  not 
come  for  any  political  purpose  properly  so  called, 
though  he  may  be  said  to  have  come  in  connection 


222  DIAZ 

with  matters  which  entered  largely  into  the  inter- 
national relations  of  the  two  republics.  In  1880  the 
public  career  of  General  Grant  was  over  and  he  was 
beginning  to  enter  into  those  unhappy  business 
ventures  which  embittered  his  last  years.  What  he 
represented  when  he  came  to  Mexico  was  the  growing 
conviction  of  American  capitalists  that  Mexico  was 
becoming  a  country  in  which  investments  might  be 
profitable  because  they  would  be  safe,  and  that 
President  Diaz  was  the  man  to  secure  the  safety. 

During  the  year  of  his  visit  to  the  States  and  the 
Exhibition  at  New  Orleans  matters  had  been  ripening 
for  a  change  in  Mexico.  The  administration  of 
General  Gonzalez  had  begun  in  peace  and  amid  every 
appearance  of  content  and  of  nascent  prosperity,  only 
to  end  in  a  very  different  state.  It  has  been  said  that 
the  first  two  years  were  a  golden  age,  but  were 
followed  by  such  an  outburst  of  waste  and  corruption 
as  had  never  been  seen  even  in  Mexico.  The  blame 
was  freely  laid  on  the  shoulders  of  President  Gonzalez. 
Rhetorical  phrases  of  this  stamp  inspire  distrust. 
We  ask  ourselves  how  and  why  the  general  should 
have  violated  an  ancient  maxim  by  suddenly  becoming 
turpissimus  between  the  end  of  the  second  and  the 
beginning  of  the  third  year  of  his  administration. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  he  was  generally  and 
fluently  abused.  Gonzalez  may  not  have  been 
perfectly  disinterested,  and  in  fact  it  is  allowed  that 
when  he  retired  from  office  he  had  provided  for 
himself.  Mr.  H.  H.  Bancroft,  who  writes  in  the  most 
friendly  spirit  to  him,  has  to  make  a  concession  of  a 
rather  significant  kind  :  "  It  was  said  that  the  source 
of  his  fortune,  which  has  been  grossly  exaggerated, 
was  due  to  peculation  ;    when  the  fact  is,  that  at  a 


AN   INTERIM  223 

time  of  such  material  development  as  Mexico  derived 
from  the  administration  of  Gonzalez,  it  was  an  easy- 
matter  for  any  intelligent  and  shrewd  man  to  acquire 
wealth  in  enterprises  of  recognised  utility  to  the 
country,  as  was  done  by  many  others,  some  of  whom 
were  not  at  all  friendly  to  the  President."  The 
apology  is  rather  of  the  nature  of  a  paving-stone 
which,  when  used  to  squash  the  calumnious  insect, 
falls  on  the  head  of  the  person  to  be  defended.  Presi- 
dent Gonzalez  was  the  ruler  of  the  country  in  which 
enterprises  of  recognised  utility  were  being  carried 
on  by  foreign  capitalists  who  stood  in  need  of  coun- 
tenance and  sometimes  of  subventions  from  the 
Government.  In  such  cases  a  shrewd  and  intelligent 
man  who  has  the  power  to  give  or  withhold  may  indeed 
easily  make  his  profit  by  accepting  what  Mr.  Pepys 
called  compliments,  without  going  over  the  blurred 
line  which  divides  indeHcacy  from  bribery  pure  and 
simple.  But  he  has  need  to  be  careful  if  he  will  keep 
himself  untouched  by  the  accursed  thing.  As  Gonza- 
lez was  not  known  to  have  had  means  of  his  own  to 
use  for  purposes  of  speculation,  it  is  to  be  feared  that 
the  fortune  he  took  away  with  him  from  office,  which, 
though  it  might  well  be  grossly  exaggerated,  was 
confessedly  not  a  pure  invention  of  the  enemy,  had 
its  origin  in  compliments  made  to  him  by  the  moneyed 
men.  We  need  not  make  too  much  of  this.  Many 
others  did  the  same  beyond  all  doubt.  That  office 
should  lead  to  fortune  was  as  well  understood  in 
Mexico  as  it  was  in  the  England  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  President  Diaz,  who  was 
born  in  poverty,  and  whose  official  emoluments  were 
never  great,  acquired  a  fortune,  and  it  would  be 
difficult  to  say  how  he  did  so  except  by  a  very  similar 


224  DIAZ 

use  of  shrewdness  and  intelligence.  If  one  must  find 
an  explanation  for  these  things,  it  can  be  found 
without  doing  violence  to  probability,  in  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  best  of  Mexican  rulers  entered  into 
transactions  of  the  same  character  as  those  invest- 
ments of  navy  balances  in  Indian  funds,  and  for  his 
own  benefit,  which  have  such  an  ugly  look  in  the  trial 
of  Lord  Melville.  Yet  Melville  was  the  friend  of 
Pitt  and  the  patron  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  defended 
him  fiercely.  Moreover,  he  made  a  good  head  of  the 
navy  at  a  great  crisis  in  our  history. 

Gonzalez  might  have  taken  the  compliments  and 
might  have  speculated  safely  with  balances,  and  yet 
have  retired  without  reproach,  if  certain  troubles  for 
which  he  was  nowise  responsible  had  not  come  to  a 
head  in  the  latter  part  of  his  Administration.  They 
all  had  their  origin  in  "  pubHc  works  "  and  financial 
distresses,  and  they  ran  their  courses  in  close  connec- 
tion with  one  another. 

President  Gonzalez  might  complain  with  entire 
justice  that  the  difficulties  which  overwhelmed  him  in 
the  last  year  of  his  tenure  of  office  had  their  origin  in 
the  Administration  of  his  predecessor.  We  have 
seen  that  President  Diaz  was  intent  on  developing  the 
resources  of  his  country,  and  showed  himself  very  well 
aware  that  the  first  step  to  be  taken  was  to  make  them 
accessible.  Therefore  the  indispensable  preliminary 
to  all  else  was  the  construction  of  railways.  Nothing 
could  well  be  more  true.  But  Don  Porfirio  had  not 
learnt  from  Benjamin  FrankHn  that  there  is  such  a 
mistake  as  "  paying  too  much  for  your  whistle." 
Railway  construction,  except  along  the  plain  which 
rises  gently  from  the  Rio  Grande  to  the  valley  of 
Mexico,  is  bound  to  be  costly.     The  rise  from  Veracruz 


AN  INTERIM  125 

to  the  capital  is  one  of  7,000  feet  in  a  distance  of 
263  miles  :   2,500  feet  of  this  rise  have  to  be  overcome 
within  1 2  miles — at  the  edge  of  the  Plain  of  Anahuac, 
where  it  falls  almost  in  a  precipice  to  the  Tierras 
Templadas.     The  construction  was  a  great  engineering 
feat,  and  one  we  may  be  proud  of,  for  it  was  carried 
out  by  a  British  firm.     But  the  working  expenses  were 
high.     The  outlay  was  hugely  increased  by  a  piece  of 
jobbery.     Don  Antonio  Escandon,  the  concessionnaire 
of  the  line,  added  $6,743,938  to  the  cost  of  construc- 
tion by  causing  the  line  to  be  increased  by  120  kilo- 
metres (85  miles)  in  order  to  serve  certain  mills  and 
lands  of  his  own.     The  subvention  he  received  from 
Government    was    $7,056,619.     In    order    to    cover 
interest  on  capital  and  working  expenses  the  freights 
were  high,  though  they  were  much  below  the  cost  of 
carrying    goods    on    mule-back,    the    only    method 
hitherto  available.     The  Veracruz  line  had  been  com- 
pleted in  1873,  and  President  Diaz  was  not  responsible 
for  the  extravagance  or  the  jobbery.     His  error  was 
that  he  did  not  take  warning  by  the  history  of  this 
enterprise,  but  granted  subventions  to  projectors  of 
new  lines  on  a  colossal  scale.     In  the  last  year  of  his 
Administration  he  promised  $64,000,000 — a  huge  sum 
for  a  Government  to  engage  to  find,  even  by  instal- 
ments, out  of  a  revenue  which  in  1880  had  just  risen 
to    $24,000,000   from   the   figure   of   $17,000,000,   at 
which  it  stood  in  1877. 

It  is  commonly  said  that  when  Diaz's  first  term 
ended  in  1880  he  left  a  balance  in  the  treasury,  and 
that  when  he  returned  to  office  at  the  close  of  1884 
he  found  nothing.  Such  a  statement  as  this  must 
have  been  made  in  reliance  on  the  lack  of  knowledge 
among  those  to  whom  it  was  directed.     That  there  was 

D.  Q 


226  DIAZ 

money  not  yet  paid  out  of  the  exchequer  may  be 
believed.  But  there  was  no  part  of  the  revenue, 
either  in  hand  or  hkely  to  be  paid  in,  which  was  not 
earmarked,  and  far  more  than  covered  by  obHgations 
which  were  about  to  mature.  The  railways  were  not 
the  only  claimants.  Subventions  had  been  promised 
for  drainage  works  and  harbours.  All  the  schemes 
which  swarmed  at  the  end  of  1880  were  not  as  much  as 
begun  to  be  executed.  A  good  many  were  put  in 
execution  and  carried  far  enough  to  give  the  projectors 
a  claim  for  part  of  their  subventions.  Then  they  were 
left  unfinished.  Not  a  few  of  these  undertakings 
were,  in  plain  English,  "  bubbles."  They  had  no 
commercial  nor  industrial  foundation.  It  was  true 
that  on  the  whole  the  railway-making  of  this  period 
did  in  the  end  profit  the  country,  and  it  is  not  less  true 
that  the  revenue  rose  from  $24,000,000  to  $33,000,000 
in  about  four  years.  But  in  the  meantime  the 
expense  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  returns,  and 
the  growth  of  the  revenue  was  largely  fictitious.  It 
represented  the  customs  dues  levied  on  the  material 
imported  for  these  as  yet  unremunerative  works. 
The  amounts  which  were  going  out  in  the  form  of 
subventions  largely  exceeded  what  was  coming  in  as 
customs  dues.  And  these  dues  were  of  course  added 
by  the  importer  to  the  price  of  the  material  for  which 
in  the  end  the  Mexicans  were  to  pay.  For  the 
moment  the  Government  appeared  to  be  in  the 
enjoyment  of  a  handsome  surplus.  The  working 
expenses  of  the  administration  (which  for  a  reason  to 
be  given  did  not  include  payment  of  interest  on  the 
debt)  were  estimated  at  $22,000,000.  As  the  revenue 
had  risen,  on  paper  at  least,  to  $33,000,000,  it  would 
appear  that  there  was  a  surplus  of  $11,000,000.     But 


AN  INTERIM  227 

this  sum  was  about  a  sixth  part  of  the  subventions 
promised  to  railways  alone  in  one  year  of  Don 
Porfirio's  first  term.  And  then  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that,  as  Mexico  was  quite  incapable  of  pro- 
viding the  capital  for  all  these  works  herself,  the 
creditors  were  foreign  capitalists.  The  debtors,  who 
were  called  upon  to  pay  sums  far  in  excess  of  their 
resources,  were  the  native  Mexicans. 

One  does  not  need  to  be  a  profound  financier  in 
order  to  be  capable  of  understanding  that  as  his  term 
of  office  drew  to  an  end  General  Gonzalez  found  him- 
self in  the  position  defined  by  the  colloquial  Spanish 
phrase  as  "  between  the  sword  and  the  wall  "  ("  entre 
la  espada  y  la  pared  ").  There  was  not  enough  to 
pay  everybody.  Therefore  somebody  must  go  unpaid. 
It  has  been  counted  for  pure  righteousness  to  the 
General  that  he  decided  not  to  impose  any  sacrifice  on 
the  capitalists  who  were  demanding  these  subventions. 
They  were  paid  to  the  full,  and  in  order  that  they 
might  not  suffer  he  stopped  the  payment  of  all  the 
salaries  of  all  the  civil  officials  of  his  Government. 
The  soldiers,  who  had  at  command  very  convincing 
arguments  why  they  should  be  satisfied,  continued  to 
receive  their  pay.  We  can  easily  believe  that  the 
foreign  capitalists  applauded  the  President's  tender 
regard  for  the  national  honour.  It  is  the  easiest  thing 
in  the  world  to  say  that  the  Mexicans  ought  not  to  have 
incurred  obligations  without  considering  whether 
they  could  fulfil  them.  An  extremely  modest  critical 
faculty  can  point  out  that  if  parliamentary  govern- 
ment had  been  a  reality  in  Mexico  the  Congress  would 
have  put  an  impossible  barrier  in  the  way  of  the 
speculative  temerity  of  President  Diaz.  If  a  country 
cannot  force  its  Government  to  act  with  good  sense, 

Q   2 


228  DIAZ 

it  must  suffer  for  its  weakness.  All  this  is  the  most 
obvious  of  the  obvious.  Whether  the  foreign  capi- 
talists, who  were  not  unacquainted  with  the  financial 
and  industrial  condition  of  Mexico,  and  who  had  every 
means  of  learning  that  the  contracts  they  made  could 
not  be  carried  out  without  injustice  to  somebody, 
were  blameless  for  the  wrong  done  is  too  big  a  question 
to  discuss  here.  The  Mexican  officials  who  were  de- 
prived of  their  salaries  considered  themselves  as  robbed 
for  the  benefit  of  the  foreigner.  They  were  not  the 
less  angry  because  they  could  see  that  General 
Gonzalez  was  accumulating  a  modest  fortune  by  a 
shrewd  and  intelligent  participation  in  works  of  public 
utility.  They  did  not  take  a  large  view,  but  simply 
said  that  he  had  been  bribed  by  foreign  capitalists 
to  satisfy  their  greed  at  the  cost  of  the  hapless  civil 
officials.  If  there  was  an  outbreak  of  corruption  and 
pillage  at  the  close  of  the  General's  term,  one  reason 
is  perhaps  that  so  many  of  the  agents  of  his  Govern- 
ment had  been  deprived  of  all  other  means  of  subsist- 
ence. If  President  Gonzalez  had  inherited  trouble 
from  his  predecessor,  he  repaid  the  ill-service  by  leaving 
him  a  no  less  serious  difficulty  to  overcome. 

When  an  important  and  vocal  section  of  the 
Mexican  community  was  in  this  excusable  state  of 
irritation,  the  President  added  two  other  grievances 
to  the  causes  of  the  unpopularity  which  overwhelmed 
him.  One  he  could  not  well  help  ;  the  other  was  the 
result  of  mere  bad  management.  The  first  was  the 
long-drawn-out  dispute  over  the  British  debt ;  the 
second  was  a  Mexican  version  of  our  "  Wood's  half- 
pence " — the  exasperating  blunder  made  with  the 
nickel  coinage.    Both  were  to  be  left  for  Diaz  to  settle. 

The  debt  was  a  sore  of  some  sixty  years'  standing, 


AN   INTERIM  229 

for  it  dated  from  1824.  It  had  been  founded  by  the 
Federalist  agitators  who  with  Santa  Ana  at  their  head 
had  upset  the  "  empire  "  of  Augustin  Iturbide.  The 
Mexican  Government  issued  bonds  for  ^3,200,000  at 
5  per  cent.  The  whole  was  taken  up  by  a  London 
financial  house  (B.  A.  Goldschmidt  &  Co.)  at  58. 
The  figures  are  sufficiently  eloquent  as  to  what  was 
thought  of  the  security,  which  was  the  whole  revenue 
of  Mexico.  The  Republic  got  in  fact  about  ^f 2,000,000 
and  had  to  pay  5  per  cent,  on  ^3,200,000.  That  the 
bargain  was  not  a  good  one  mattered  little  to  those 
who  controlled  the  spigot  of  taxation  in  Mexico  for 
the  time  being.  They  would  not  have  to  answer  for 
the  payment,  and  in  the  meantime  they  handled 
£2,000,000.  Neither,  presumably,  did  the  future 
weigh  much  on  the  minds  of  the  financiers,  who  passed 
the  stock  on  to  the  too  confiding  investor.  The  secu- 
rity was  bad,  and  the  usual  sequence  of  events  was 
unrolled.  Next  year  the  Mexican  Government  was 
in  the  market  with  another  loan  of  ^f 3, 200,000 — this 
time  at  6  per  cent.  It  was  taken  by  another  financial 
house  (Barclay,  Herring  &  Co.)  at  86|.  Then  in  due 
course  came  the  inevitable  irregularities  of  payment, 
reductions  of  interest,  capitalisation  of  arrears,  and 
so  forth.  The  same  old  bad  debts  were  rearranged 
and  renamed.  Somebody  was  paid  for  services,  or, 
in  English-Chinese  phrase,  took  "  squeezes,"  but  the 
bondholders  were  paid  by  fits  and  starts  and  very  ill 
or  were  not  paid  at  all.  If  the  protecting  shade  of  the 
Monroe  doctrine  had  not  loomed  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
the  Republic  would  probably  have  been  taken  in  hand 
very  much  as  Egypt  was  to  be.  But  the  Monroe 
doctrine  did  stand  in  the  way,  and  the  sorrows  of  the 
bondholders  never  got  beyond  the  stage  of  being  the 


230  DIAZ 

subject  of  diplomatic  correspondence.  If  the  holders 
of  the  bonds  lost  their  investments  Mexico  obtained 
no  good  from  the  money.  The  fortunes  accumulated 
by  Santa  Ana  and  other  politicians  alone  remained  to 
show  where  it  had  gone.  As  the  anarchy  grew  worse 
the  ways  of  Mexican  politicians  grew  more  violent. 
The  culmination  of  the  whole  miserable  story  was  the 
forcible  seizure  in  the  British  Embassy  by  Miramon 
of  a  sum  of  money  set  aside  for  the  payment  of  British 
creditors.  This  was  the  last  provocation  which 
stimulated  the  British  Government  to  join  with 
France  and  Spain  to  enforce  some  attention  to  their 
claims.  The  common  action  of  the  three  was  dissolved 
when  the  designs  of  Napoleon  III.  were  revealed.  If 
British  creditors  received  any  satisfaction  it  was 
because  they  were  able  to  intercept  part  of  the  loan 
raised  in  France  under  the  patronage  of  Napoleon  III. 
and  for  the  benefit  of  Maximilian. 

When  Juarez  by  virtue  of  the  protection  of  the 
United  States  issued  victorious  from  the  struggle  in 
1 867  he  declared  that  all  the  Governments  which  had 
recognised  the  archduke  had  thereby  declared  war  on 
the  Republic.  War  dissolved  all  treaties  and  obliga- 
tions. He  expelled  foreign  Ministers  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  representative  of  the  United  States.  Little 
by  little  and  step  by  step  relations  were  renewed.  The 
North  German  Confederation  set  the  example  in 
1869,  and  when  France  resumed  diplomatic  intercourse 
in  1880  the  only  Power  which  still  sent  Mexico  "  to 
Coventry  "  was  Great  Britain.  When  it  is  remem- 
bered that  during  these  years  a  British  company  com- 
pleted the  Veracruz  to  Mexico  Railway,  and  that 
British  men  of  business  prospered  in  the  country,  it 
would  seem  that  the  lack  of  a  Minister  did  no  harm. 


INTERIM  231 

The  fact,  oi  ^SBSBF,  is  that  the  more  serious  among 
Mexican  poj|Sci|^s  were  perfectly  well  aware  that  they 
could  no^jtjloyjrto  offend  the  capitalists  of  the  great 
creditOjJHBpL,  however  high  might  be  the  tone  they 
allowe^PmKtiselves  to  take  with  its  Government, 
from  .which  they  had  nothing  to  fear  thanks  to  the 
protection  of  the  Monroe  doctrine.^  In  spite  of  many 
loud  complaints  of  ill-usage  and  occasional  injury  by 
common  criminals,  or  officials  who  lose  their  heads 
in  fits  of  greed  or  rage,  foreigners  in  general,  and 
British  subjects  in  particular,  suffer  incomparably 
less  from  the  vices  of  Spanish-American  government 
than  do  the  natives. 

By  the  time  that  Gonzalez  became  President  the 
debt  had  rolled  up  in  snowball  fashion  till  it  had, 
what  with  original  capital  and  arrears  of  interest 
capitalised  and  further  arrears  of  interest  on  what  had 
been  capitalised,  reached  the  figure  of  5^18,383,761. 
Though  Mexico  seemed  to  get  on  very  well  without 
holding  diplomatic  relations  with  the  British  Govern- 
ment,   and    though    British    capitalists    showed    no 

^  An  incident  which  happened  in  another  Spanish-American  republic 
may  help  to  explain  the  comparative  unimportance  of  Ministers  and  Consuls 
to  those  British  subjects  who  are  in  the  service  of  great  financial  concerns. 
An  engineer  in  the  employment  of  a  British-made  and  managed  railway 
took  upon  himself  to  give  first  aid  to  a  native  "  peon  "  whose  leg  had  been 
accidentally  broken  in  a  railway  station.  When  the  native  doctor  was 
called  in  he  asked  indignantly  who  had  dared  to  perform  a  surgical  operation 
to  the  detriment  of  his  monopoly.  When  he  was  told,  he  caused  the 
engineer  to  be  arrested.  If  the  good  Samaritan  had  had  to  wait  for  help 
from  Minister  or  Consul  he  would  have  waited  a  long  time  while  the  corre- 
spondence was  following  the  proper  course.  Fortunately  for  him  another 
resource  was  used.  The  local  manager  telegraphed  to  headquarters.  The 
chief  of  the  company  in  the  province  went  to  the  governor.  In  a  few  minutes 
the  governor's  secretary  was  on  his  way  to  the  local  station  in  a  special  train. 
The  company's  representative  had  simply  told  the  governor  that  its  servants 
must  not  be  treated  in  this  style.  The  officials  were  suspended  and  the 
engineer  was  released.  Nor  did  he  hear  any  more  about  the  matter,  though 
he  had  undeniably  laid  himself  open  to  a  fine  for  performing  a  surgical 
operation  without  a  diploma. 


232 


DIAZ 


reluctance  to  risk  money  in  the  Republic,  yet  Presi- 
dent Gonzalez  and  his  advisers  could  not  but  be  aware 
that  Mexico  could  not  go  on  for  ever  without  regu- 
lating her  relations  with  the  great  money  market 
of  the  world,  and  Great  Britain  was  aware  that  she 
could  not  keep  Mexico  "  in  Coventry  "  for  ever.  Of 
course,  the  settlement  of  the  debt  dispute  was  to 
be  the  preliminary  to  better  relations  in  the  future. 
Approaches  were  made  on  both  sides  ;  unofficial  con- 
sular visits  were  made  by  Great  Britain.  Sir  Spencer 
St.  John,  a  diplomatist  who  knew  Spanish-America 
well,  came  to  Mexico  to  arrange  for  the  resumption 
of  diplomatic  intercourse.  Don  Ignacio  Mariscal 
came  to  England  from  Mexico  on  a  similar  mission. 
Settlements  were  proposed,  discussed,  rejected,  taken 
up  again.  The  main  purpose  of  the  Mexican  Govern- 
ment was  to  consolidate  the  debt  and  raise  more 
money  with  which  to  carry  on,  and  meet  the  first 
coupons  when  they  became  due.  By  the  final 
arrangement,  which  was  maintained  by  President 
Diaz,  Mexico  was  to  contract  a  consolidated  debt  of 
£17,200,000,  of  which  £14,448,000  was  to  be  acknow- 
ledged to  the  bondholders  and  £2,752,000  was  to  be 
set  aside  for  "  expenses  of  conversion." 

The  President  had  probably  made  as  good  a  settle- 
ment as  was  possible,  but  at  the  end  of  his  Administra- 
tion when  the  transaction  was  completed  he  was  so 
unpopular  that  he  was  sure  to  be  blamed  for  whatever 
he  did.  The  Mexican  public  said  that  they  were  being 
burdened  by  a  debt  vastly  in  excess  of  any  sum  the 
country  had  ever  received.  They  did  not  consider 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  sum  represented  interest 
which  Mexico  had  promised  to  pay  and  had  not  paid. 
They  accused  the  President  of  intending  to  steal  the 


AN  INTERIM  233 

3^2,752,000,  and  they  resented  certain  new  taxes  which 
he  had  imposed  with  the  consent  of  Congress  to  enable 
the  Government  to  meet  its  obHgations.  The  last 
days  of  his  Administration  were  disturbed  by  riots, 
and  he  left  the  burden  to  be  taken  up  by  his  successor. 
In  all  these  matters  Gonzalez  had  found  confusion 
provided  for  him  to  deal  with.  But  in  the  matter  of 
the  nickel  currency,  he  made  trouble  for  himself,  and 
bequeathed  it  to  his  successor.  There  was  a  lack  of 
small  currency  in  Mexico.  Something  smaller  than 
the  old  gold  and  silver  coins  was  needed.  As  the 
country  had  its  mints  and  abounded  in  metals, 
nothing  would  appear  to  have  been  more  simple  than 
to  make  the  necessary  small  change  at  home.  The 
course  taken  was  certain  to  arouse  distrust.  Nickel 
coins  were  made  in  the  United  States  and  sent  to 
Mexico  to  be  stamped.  From  the  first  there  was  a 
pretty  manifest  suspicion  that  some  swindle  lay  behind 
the  introduction  of  these  coins.  And  it  is  not  to  be 
denied  that,  whatever  the  intentions  of  the  Govern- 
ment may  have  been,  the  nickels  lent  themselves  to 
swindle.  They  were  divided  into  one,  two,  and  five 
cent  pieces.  The  sizes  were  so  ill-judged  that  it 
would  have  paid  dishonest  officials  weU  to  melt  down 
the  one  and  two  cent  pieces  and  recast  them  as  five 
cent  pieces.  No  limit  appears  to  have  been  fixed  to 
the  amount  for  which  these  pieces  of  token  money  were 
legal  tender.  The  limit  put  on  the  total  amount  to 
be  struck,  some  ,^400,000  (about  $4,000,000  Mexican 
dollars),  was  believed  to  be  a  mere  bHnd.  It  was 
thought  that  vastly  greater  sums  of  nickel  would  be 
issued.  It  followed  that  if  a  creditor  or  an  employer 
was  free  to  pay  debt  or  wages  in  these  coins  the 
creditor  or  workman  would  find  himself  in  possession 


234  I^IAZ 

of  nothing  better  than   a  handful  of  tokens  of  no 
intrinsic  value. 

The  nickels  were  rejected  from  the  very  beginning. 
Stronger  Governments  than  the  Mexican  have  failed 
in  the  attempt  to  force  a  distrusted  currency  on  a 
whole  population.  Peoples  who  will  submit  -  to 
extreme  degrees  of  religious  and  political  oppression 
have  been  known  to  revolt  against  this  form  of  attack 
on  their  pockets.  However  docile  the  bulk  of  the 
Mexicans  may  be,  they  showed  a  disposition  to  take  a 
violent  course  against  the  nickels,  and  President 
Gonzalez's  Ministers  thought  it  would  be  prudent  in 
them  to  try  to  insinuate  these  coins  into  circulation 
by  gentle  methods.  If  there  w?s  no  element  of  fraud 
in  the  device  they  chose,  their  moral  character  can  be 
vindicated  only  at  the  expense  of  their  intelligence. 
They  sold  large  quantities  of  these  tokens  to  merchants 
at  discounts  which  in  some  cases  went  as  high  as 
25  per  cent.  As  the  Government  could  not  refuse  to 
take  its  own  money  in  payment  at  the  nominal  value 
without  utterly  destroying  its  credit,  and  as  no  limit 
was  put  to  the  amount  for  which  the  nickels  were  legal 
tender,  the  obvious  result  followed.  The  astute  men 
of  business  presented  them  in  payment  of  customs 
dues.  The  coins  were  soon  back  on  the  hands  of  the 
Government  after  inflicting  a  loss  on  the  revenue  in 
the  course  of  their  brief  tour  out  and  home.  As  for 
the  mass  of  the  population,  after  a  preliminary  period 
of  protest  and  agitation  it  fairly  broke  into  riotous 
assembly.  Even  if  the  Government  could  have  relied 
on  the  soldiers  it  would  have  been  beaten.  But  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  army  were  like  to  be  as  great 
sufferers  as  any  other  class.  There  could  be  but  one 
end  to  such  a  conflict  between  any  Government  and 


AN   INTERIM  235 

the  instincts  of  human  nature.  The  nickels  were 
howled  down,  and  President  Gonzalez  had  to  go  to 
Congress  with  a  request  that  it  would  help  him  to 
withdraw  them  in  some  decent  manner. 

If  Diaz  had  ever  entertained  a  doubt  whether  his 
locum  tenens  would  keep  to  the  understanding  between 
them  he  must  have  been  reassured  by  the  course  of 
events  at  the  end  of  1883  and  throughout  1884. 
Gonzalez  had  become  so  utterly  unpopular  that  he 
could  not  have  broken  the  compact  if  he  had  tried 
to  play  false.  Nobody  in  the  country  had  the  least 
interest  in  supporting  him  unless  it  were  the  capitalists, 
and  they  had  nothing  to  gain,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a 
great  deal  to  lose,  by  helping  him  to  launch  on  an 
adventure  which  would  soon  have  plunged  the  country 
back  into  all  the  troubles  of  Lerdo's  time.  A  Presi- 
dent of  Mexico  can  do  a  great  deal  in  the  way  of 
imposing  a  dummy  successor  on  the  country,  but  not 
when  he  has  offended  all  the  civil  servants,  when  he 
has  no  certainty  of  support  from  the  army,  and  when 
all  the  elements  of  the  population  are  banded  against 
him.  The  fact  that  there  was  no  general  rising  and 
that  no  "  Plans  "  were  promulgated  in  any  of  the 
States  showed  that  the  increase  of  employment  due 
to  the  introduction  of  foreign  capital  to  be  spent  on 
railways,  harbour  works,  etc.,  was  turning  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Mexicans  to  more  profitable  forms  of 
activity  than  "  pronunciamientos."  But  the  fact 
that  apart  from  a  few  street  riots  in  the  capital  and 
some  towns  the  peace  was  kept  is  best  explained  by 
the  universal  conviction  that  Diaz  would  soon  be  back 
in  the  Presidency.  Nobody  appeared  against  him, 
and  when  the  election  was  held  in  September  he 
received  15,999  votes  of  a  total  of  16,462  delegates. 


236  DIAZ 

There  Is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Gonzalez  made  any 
attempt  to  prevent  the  return  of  Don  Porfirio.  He 
was,  it  is  true,  accused  of  attempts  to  poison  the 
President-Elect,  and  also  to  kill  him  by  engineering 
an  accident  on  the  Irolo  Railway,  on  which  Diaz  was 
travelling.  But  these  are  the  little  vivacities  of 
Spanish  -  American  political  controversy.  Nobody 
believes  such  accusations,  and  least  of  all  those  who 
make  them.  President  Gonzalez  retired  to  enjoy  his 
fortune  in  peace,  and  President  Diaz  took  up  the 
reins  in  December,  1884,  to  hold  them  for  twenty- 
seven  vears. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PRESIDENT   FOR    GOOD 

There  is  no  reason  for  breaking  the  narrative  by 
any  further  accounts  of  Presidential  elections  in  the 
life  of  Don  Porfirio  Diaz.  Elections  there  were  in  a 
purely  formal  way.  But  everybody  in  Mexico  knew 
well  that  they  meant  nothing.  First  Congress 
amended  the  law  which  forbade  immediate  re-elec- 
tions. Then  it  removed  all  restrictions.  Then  in  1904 
it  prolonged  the  President's  term  of  office  from  four 
to  six  years.  No  competitor  appeared  in  any  of  the 
elections  so  called  of  1888,  1892,  1896,  1900,  and  1904. 
An  opponent  did  come  forward  in  1910,  but  the  end 
was  then  at  hand,  and  the  story  must  be  left  till  we 
reach  its  date.  It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  for  about 
twenty-seven  years  he  was  by  common  consent,  and, 
to  judge  by  appearances,  to  the  satisfaction  of  all, 
the  master  of  Mexico.  Francia,  the  Despot  of 
Paraguay,  governed  for  nearly  as  long,  and  did  in  one 
way  more  than  Don  Porfirio,  for  he  died  in  power,  and 
he  founded  a  kind  of  dynasty.  No  other  Spanish- 
American  tyrant  has  achieved  as  much  as  either  of 
them,  and  Francia  had  a  far  easier  task  than  the 
ruler  of  Mexico. 

During  those  twenty-seven  years,  or  rather  during 
twenty-six  of  them,  Diaz  was  the  Government  of 
Mexico.  It  was  not  because  Congress  approved  that 
he  was  re-elected  and  his  term  was  not  prolonged. 
Congress  approved  because  its  master  directed  it  to  give 


238  DIAZ 

its  approval.  In  other  words,  the  Government  of 
Mexico  was,  in  the  technical  sense  of  the  word,  "  a 
tyranny."  A  single  man  had  taken  to  himself  all  the 
powers  of  the  State,  and  was  not  a  whit  the  less  tyrant 
because  he  used  them  to  the  best  of  his  ability  and 
with  the  help  of  the  wisest  advice  he  could  obtain  for 
the  general  good.  No  great  event,  or  succession  of 
events,  divides  these  twenty-six  years  of  rule  into 
periods.  Their  history  cannot  be  told  chronologically 
— or  at  least  nothing  is  gained,  and  some  quite 
unnecessary  repetition  is  incurred,  if  we  follow  the 
mere  order  of  time.  We  have  one  single  subject  to 
deal  with — the  manipulation  of  Mexico  by  President 
Diaz.  It  may  be  divided  under  heads  for  purposes 
of  convenience  and  for  its  better  understanding,  but 
it  cannot  be  intelligently  arranged  by  mere  dates. 
And  the  subject  is  the  sincere  effort  of  a  strong-willed 
and  clear-headed  man  to  cure  a  chronic  anarchy,  by 
police  repression,  by  the  spread  of  mere  school  educa- 
tion, and  by  the  development  of  material  prosperity. 
It  will  be  interesting  to  see  how  far  he  succeeded. 
The  spectacle  of  a  strong  man  resolutely  engaged  in 
"  getting  things  done  "  is  always  to  be  looked  at 
respectfully.  But  the  political  instruction  of  the 
story,  and  even  the  true  meaning  of  it,  are  to  be 
sought  rather  in  the  reasons  for  his  failure.  For,  as 
we  now  must  confess,  he  did  fail.  He  would  not 
have  succeeded,  even  if  he  had  died  in  possession  of 
power,  as  Francia  did,  and  the  anarchy  had  broken 
out  after  his  death.  But  it  burst  forth  while  he  was 
alive,  and  drove  him  into  exile,  from  which  he  never 
returned.  After  all  he  had  done  for  Mexico  he  came 
to  the  same  end  as  some  of  the  least  sympathetic  of 
Spanish-American  despots — Juan  Manuel  Rosas,  for 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  239 

instance.  What,  then,  did  he  really  do  ?  And  was  it 
his  fault  that  his  work  bore  so  little  fruit  ?  The  answer 
to  the  second  question  can  wait,  and,  indeed,  cannot 
be  given  till  we  have  replied  to  the  first. 

We  may  begin  by  allowing  that  he  did  all  that  lay 
within   the   power   of  a   strong,   resolute,   and   very 
laborious  man  who  commanded  a  sufficient  armed  force 
to  endow  his  country  with  all  the  material  instruments 
capable  of  being  used  to  produce  material  prosperity. 
It  was  a  considerable  feat,  and  well  deserving  to  be 
studied.     But  in  the  face  of  what  we  are  forced  to  see 
to-day  one  becomes  a  little  impatient  with  the  effusions 
of  writers  who  but  a  few  years  ago  were  assuring  us 
that  because  of  the  roads,  railways,  drainage,  mining, 
and  new  harbours  which  were  already  made  or  in 
process  of  being  made,  because  of  a  growing  revenue, 
and  recurrent  surpluses,  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  had  been  created  in  Mexico.     The  races  who  ran 
their  courses  on  the  great  central  plain,  in  Oaxaca,  or 
Yucatan  before  the  Spaniard  came  executed  public 
works,  which  may  have  been  "  strangely  magnified  " 
by  uncritical  writers,  but  were  none  the  less  far  from 
contemptible  when  they  are  considered  as  the  achieve- 
ments of  peoples  who  had  not  the  use  of  domesticated 
animals,  and  were  forced  to  work  with  stone  and  copper 
tools,  and  yet  they  lie  overgrown  by  tropical  forest,  or 
crumbling   amid   the    degraded   descendants   of   the 
peoples  who  had  once  the  energy  and  ingenuity  to 
build  them.      The  Spaniards  constructed  "  obras  de 
romanos  "  while  they  ruled  in  "  the  Indies,"  but  we 
know  how  their  colonial  empire  ended.     And  these 
vanished   Indian   communities   and  their   destroyers 
did  their  great  works  by  themselves.     They  were  not 
left  in  debt  to  foreigners  when  the  work  was  done. 


240  DIAZ 

Mexico  was  so  indebted.  The  work  was  done  for  her 
by  foreign  skill  and  capital.  Every  mile  of  railway 
represented  an  increase  of  the  hold  which  the  foreigner 
had  on  her  land  and  her  resources.  Everything,  there- 
fore, is  not  said  when  we  are  asked  to  note  that  whereas 
there  were  only  567  kilometres  all  told  of  railway 
when  Diaz  became  President,  the  mileage  had  risen 
to  16,285  kilometres  by  1906.  We  want  to  know  what 
she  paid  for  this  increase  in  her  means  of  communica- 
tion and  to  what  extent  her  people  profited  indivi- 
dually. We  hear  that  the  national  revenue  trebled 
without  any  great  increase  in  taxation,  and  that  the 
surpluses  were  frequent  and  large.  In  1906 — 1907  the 
surplus  reached  the  remarkable  figure  of  $29,209,481 
out  of  a  revenue  of  about  $88,000,000.  With  these 
figures  alone  before  us  we  do  not  expect  to  find  that 
the  national  debt  has  increased  in  the  same  proportion. 
And  yet  it  has.  The  traveller  who  finds  the  streets 
of  Mexico  city  greatly  improved,  parks  laid  out,  a 
national  opera-house  built  at  great  expense,  sees  the 
proofs  of  increasing  civilisation.  But  he  sees  them 
only  because  he  does  not  look  below  the  surface,  or 
because  he  keeps  entirely  to  a  few  towns.  A  national 
opera-house  in  a  very  fine  style  of  French  architecture 
has  been  built  out  of  municipal  funds  in  the  city  of 
Sao  Paolo  in  Brazil.  When  one  of  the  authorities 
was  asked  why  so  much  money  was  spent  on  a  theatre 
when  the  people  of  the  town  have  little  liking  for  this 
form  of  amusement,  and  rarely  leave  their  houses  at 
night,  he  replied  that  the  building  would  impress 
foreigners  with  an  idea  of  the  opulence  of  Sao  Paolo 
and  would  in  short  be  a  good  advertisement.  If  the 
foreigner  who  is  to  be  impressed  goes  for  an  hour's 
drive  out  of  the  town  he  will  find  the  population  living 


PRESIDENT  FOR  GOOD  241 

in  huts  of  thin  mud  walls  with  but  thatched  roofs, 
and  in  conditions  which  preclude  not  only  comfort 
but  even  common  decency.  There  is  not  a  little  of 
such  civilisation  as  this  in  Spain  and  Portugal  them- 
selves, and  there  is  far  more  in  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
America.  Whoever  goes  but  a  very  short  way  out  of 
the  towns  goes  centuries  back  in  civilisation  ;  and  he 
goes  from  the  outward  appearance  of  opulence  to  a 
reality  of  dire  poverty.  The  prosperity  which  is  shown 
in  public  works,  increases  of  revenue,  French  fashions, 
and  buildings  in  the  towns  does  not  seem  to  affect  the 
mass  of  the  population  in  the  least.  Even  a  rise  in 
wages  seems  to  do  no  good,  for  it  is  accompanied  by, 
or  is  the  result  of,  a  rise  in  prices. 

In  order  to  begin  doing  what  it  was  given  him  to 
do.  President  Diaz  had  to  start  his  second  term  by 
bringing  the  finances  back  into  order,  and  to  do  that 
he  had  to  make  what  was  in  fact  a  confession  of  error. 
He  had  swamped  the  revenue  by  granting  subventions 
to  the  contractors — foreigners  all  of  them,  even  when 
there  was  a  Mexican  figurehead  to  the  enterprise. 
General  Gonzalez  had  met  the  difficulty,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  sacrificing  his  own  employees  and  paying  the 
foreign  capitalists.  He  may  or  may  not  have  had 
personal  reasons  for  maintaining  the  national  honour 
at  such  a  cost,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  put  the  Mexican 
Government  on  the  road  which  must  infallibly  lead 
to  a  renewal  of  revolts  and  anarchy.  President  Diaz 
boldly  reversed  his  predecessor's  course  and  did  not 
shrink  from  making  what  was  in  fact  a  practical 
confession  of  his  own  errors.  He  restored  the  salaries 
of  the  civil  servants,  but  with  the  abatements  already 
mentioned,  which  were  for  the  moment  put  as  high 
as  25  per  cent.     The  figure  was  lowered  after  a  time 


242  DIAZ 

to  10.  The  means  to  do  this  act  of  bare  justice  were 
found  by  suspending  payment  of  the  interest  of  a 
floating  debt,  and  by  withdrawing  the  subventions 
which  he  had  promised  to  give  when  he  was  in  office 
before.  This  was,  of  course,  neither  more  nor  less  than 
a  partial  bankruptcy,  but  the  drastic  measure  did  not 
hurt  President  Diaz  in  the  estimate  of  the  capitalists. 
They  must  have  known  that  the  measure  was  neces- 
sary ;  they  had  profited  much  already,  and  they 
foresaw  large  advantages  in  the  future  if  only  the 
peace  could  be  kept.  So  long  as  the  President  did 
provide  Mexico  with  a  working  Government,  capital 
and  labour  between  them  could  do  the  rest  by  drawing 
vast  quantities  of  marketable  materials  from  the  soil 
of  Mexico. 

Industry  asked  for  defence  from  mere  violence  while 
it  was  engaged  in  obtaining  and  transporting  the 
material,  and  that  the  President  did  give.  We  have 
seen  how  he  had  begun  the  work  during  his  first  term. 
He  had  not  then  been  able  to  do  more  than  make  a 
good  start,  and  there  had  been  a  fall  from  the  standard 
he  then  reached  during  the  Administration  of  General 
Gonzalez.  Mexico  was  still  a  land  of  brigandage. 
We  who  have  never  quite  succeeded  in  putting  a  stop 
to  dacoity  in  India  ought  not  to  reproach  the  memory 
of  the  Mexican  Government  of  that  time  if  it  took 
years  to  get  the  upper  hand  of  the  bandits.  In  a 
thinly-inhabited  country  full  of  hiding-places,  with  a 
very  poor  population  who  have  no  cause  to  fear  the 
robber,  and  can  even  sympathise  with  him,  brigandage 
is  a  very  difficult  pest  to  cure.  It  was  particularly 
hard  to  suppress  in  Mexico  because  the  most  valuble 
part  of  the  national  produce  was  still  bullion,  the  most 
desirable  form  of  portable  property  to  the  highway- 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  243 

man.  Until  railways  had  been  much  developed,  and 
President  Diaz  had  had  time  to  extend  the  action  of  the 
"  rurales  "  to  all  parts  of  the  Republic,  the  transport 
of  the  gold  and  silver  from  the  mines  to  the  ports  was 
never  quite  safe.  Indeed,  it  was  not  until  the  police 
had  been  brought  up  to  the  level  of  their  task  that 
the  trains  themselves  were  secure.  They  were  occa- 
sionally stopped  and  robbed. 

The  bullion  was  carried  to  railway  stations  or  ports 
in  convoys  or  caravans  known  as  "  conductas."  This 
word  applied  originally  not  to  the  "  recuas  "  or  strings 
of  mules  which  carried  the  booty  in  earlier  days,  or 
the  wagons  which  came  to  be  used  afterwards,  but  to 
the  armed  guard  sent  with  them  as  a  protection. 
Even  an  escort  was  not  always  enough  in  a  country 
where  the  brigands  operated  in  bands  which  might 
be  numbered  by  the  hundred  and  the  roads  ran  through 
mountain  passes  or  through  bush.  The  mine  owners 
adopted  a  device  to  improve  their  own  chance  of 
escaping  loss  and  to  puzzle  the  bandits.  They  took 
to  sending  the  bullion  in  iron  wagons  which  were  heavy 
to  drag  along,  but  were  for  that  very  reason  trouble- 
some to  carry  off  across  country.  They  were  elabo- 
rately barred  and  locked  so  as  to  be  hard  to  open. 
The  calculation  was  that  the  brigands  would  be  unable 
either  to  carry  them  off  or  break  into  them  before  an 
armed  force  could  be  brought  up  to  recover  the  spoils. 
When  Mexicans  were  reproached  with  the  little 
security  their  country  afforded  to  the  honest  trader 
they  were  apt  to  reply  that  the  care  the  Government 
took  to  provide  escorts  was  the  best  proof  of  its  desire 
to  protect  life  and  property.  The  desire  was  no  doubt 
sincere,  but  the  execution  was  defective  till  President 
Diaz's  "  rurales  "  were  in  full  working  order.     But  it 


244  I^IAZ 

is  allowed  that  by  the  close  of  his  second  term  the 
settled  parts  of  Mexico  had  become  safe.  And  this, 
it  must  be  confessed,  was  the  condition  antecedent 
to  every  other  kind  of  improvement. 

It  was  also  far  easier  than  the  task  imposed  by 
ancient  fiscal  error  on  the  Government  of  Mexico.  A 
valuable  trade  can  be  conducted  without  any  measure 
of  Government  protection  where  the  traders  can  go 
armed  in  bodies  and  defend  themselves.  The  once- 
flourishing  trade  of  the  prairies  in  the  Santa  Fe  trail 
owed  nothing  to  the  police  either  of  the  United  States 
or  of  Mexico.  There  was  none,  and  the  traders  who 
carried  their  goods  in  the  prairie  wagons  defended 
them  against  wild  Indians  and  robbers  alike  with  their 
rifles.  But  a  bad  system  of  taxation  produces  a 
universal  and  pervasive  evil,  which  can  only  be  over- 
come, and  that  but  partially,  by  another  evil  all  but 
as  bad  as  itself,  which  is  smuggling.  There  was 
smuggling  in  Mexico,  but  mainly  on  the  northern 
frontier,  and  its  operations  did  not  extend  southward 
across  the  belt  of  desert  which  divides  the  north  from 
the  centre  of  the  Republic.  The  rest  of  the  country 
suffered  from  a  system  of  taxation  inherited  from  the 
old  Spanish  colonial  Government.  It  was  of  a  nature 
to  be  destructive  to  all  industry.  A  reformation  which 
should  sweep  it  away  and  replace  it  by  something 
more  rational  was  quite  as  necessary  as  either  public 
works  or  public  security  if  Mexico  was  to  reach  the 
level  of  prosperity  attainable  by  its  poeple.  But  it 
was  far  more  difficult  to  obtain.  Any  Mexican,  official 
or  unofficial,  who  had  average  commonsense  and  was 
an  honest  man,  would  see  easily  enough  that  without 
facilities  for  transport  there  could  be  little  or  no  trade, 
and  that  without  security  for  life  and  property  there 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  245 

could  be  no  industry,  or  but  little.  It  was  equally 
easy  for  him  to  see  that  roads  and  railways  would 
provide  the  facilities,  and  that  a  good  constabulary 
would  establish  the  security.  But  when  the  matter  to 
be  considered  was  the  reform  of  an  old-established 
system  of  taxation,  to  which  everybody  was  accus- 
tomed, and  in  the  continuance  of  which  many  were 
interested,  there  was  no  chance  of  the  same  unanimity 
as  in  regard  to  such  simple  questions  as  roads  and 
police,  and  the  remedy  was  likely  to  be  hard  to  find. 
There  was  no  mere  question  of  the  suppression  of  a 
recognised  evil.  One  system  of  levying  a  contribu- 
tion from  the  pockets  of  the  taxpayer  was  to  be 
replaced  by  another,  and  somebody  was  sure  to  be 
afraid  that  the  change  would  do  him  a  damage. 
There  were  indeed  three  classes  of  great  influence  in 
Mexico  who  would  certainly  oppose  any  effective 
reform.  The  problem  was  so  continually  prominent 
during  the  whole  Administration  of  President  Diaz 
that  any  account  of  his  government  in  which  it  was 
passed  over  would  be  most  incomplete. 

The  substance  of  the  whole  question  may  be  divided 
under  two  heads.  There  were  taxes  in  Mexico  which 
by  their  very  nature  were  destructive  of  all  industry, 
and  therefore  could  be  properly  dealt  with  only  by  total 
abolition.  There  were  taxes  which,  though  reasonable 
in  themselves,  were  so  unfairly  apportioned  that  they 
did  about  as  much  harm  as  the  others,  and  failed  to 
produce  an  adequate  revenue. 

The  tax-exacting  devices  which  were  so  bad  that 
they  could  be  amended  only  by  abolitions  were  the 
"  alcabalas,"  the  "  portazgos,"  and  the  internal 
customs  barriers.  All  three  had  been  imported  from 
Spain,  where  they  had  produced  their  full  effect  by 


246  DIAZ 

killing   the   nascent   industry   of   the   country,    and 
they  had  continued  their  destructive  course  in  Mexico. 
The  first  has  always  been  quoted  as  the  very  perfection 
of  a  thoroughly  bad  tax.     It  was  an  excise  levied  on 
goods  sold  in  the  market  or  by  public  auction.     In 
spite  of  its  Arabic  name  it  was  of  Roman  origin.     Of 
course  it  was  not  always  equally  heavy,  nor  levied 
with  equal  severity.     Mexicans  got  off  more  lightly 
than  the  Spaniards  of  Old  Spain.     In  the  mother  coun- 
try the  alcabala  (or  alcavala)  went  as  high  as  14  per 
cent,  of  the  price  of  the  goods  at  one  time,  and  the 
country  was  sensibly  relieved  when  it  was  reduced  to  6. 
When  in  1885,  "^^^  ^^^^  Y^^^  ^^  I^on  Porfirio's  second 
Administration,  Congress  voted  the  general  alcabala 
for  all  the  Republic,  it  fixed  the  rate  at  "  one  half  of 
I  per  cent,  upon  the  value  in  excess  of  $20  of  trans- 
actions of  buying  and  selling  of  every  kind  of  mer- 
chandise, whether  in  wholesale  or  retail,  in  whatever 
place  throughout  the  whole  Republic."     The  same 
impost  was  put  on  "  all  sales  and  resales  of  country  or 
city  property  ;    upon  all   exchanges  of   movable   or 
immovable   property ;     on   mortgages,    transfers,   or 
gifts,  collateral  or  bequeathed  inheritances  ;  on  bonds, 
rents  of  farms,  when  the  rent  exceeds  $20.00  annually, 
and    on    all    contracts    with   the    Federal    State,    or 
municipal  Governments."    One-half  of  i  per  cent,  does 
not  sound  like  a  heavy  impost.     But  this  was  only 
the  Federal  alcabala.     The  States  and  municipalities 
levied  others  to  provide  their  local  revenue.     Some- 
times they  levied  an  ad  valorem  duty,  sometimes  they 
imposed  a  fixed  charge  on  the  article.     Whatever  the 
rule  was  the  alcabala  was  a  killing  pest,  because  it 
required  for  its  collection  a  swarm  of  officials  and  an 
endless  fuss  of  inspection.     Of  course,  it  tended  to 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  247 

have  the  effect  which,  as  Adam  Smith  pointed  out, 
was  inseparable  from  such  an  impost.  "  Through  the 
greater  part  of  a  country  in  which  a  tax  of  this  kind  is 
established  nothing  can  be  produced  for  distant  sale. 
The  produce  of  every  part  of  the  country  must  be 
proportioned  to  the  consumption  of  the  neighbour- 
hood." It  is  obvious  that  this  must  have  been  the 
effect.  The  alcabala  was  levied  on  the  ox  when  it  was 
sold  to  the  cattle-dealer.  Then  again  when  the  dealer 
sold  it  to  the  butcher,  on  the  hide  when  sold  to  the 
tanner,  on  the  tanned  hide  when  sold  to  shoemaker  or 
saddler,  and  on  the  saddle  when  sold  by  the  maker  to 
a  tradesman,  or  by  a  tradesman  to  the  customer.  At 
every  step  there  was  an  inspection  to  be  undergone, 
forms  to  be  filled,  stamps  to  be  fixed.  No  circulation 
of  goods  was  possible  under  such  a  perpetual  down- 
pour of  officialdom  and  taxation. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  such  a  system  of  taxa- 
tion would  ruin  any  industry.  It  could  not  be  applied 
in  a  country  in  which  active  industry  existed  without 
producing  universal  rebellion.  On  the  only  occasion 
on  which  an  attempt  was  made  to  apply  the  alcabala 
to  an  industrial  community — when  the  Duke  of  Alva 
tried  to  impose  it  on  the  Spanish  Netherlands — it  did 
what  political  oppression  and  religious  persecution  had 
failed  to  do — it  united  all  the  Netherlanders,  Protestant 
and  Catholic,  in  one  universal  rebellion.  The  Duke, 
arbitrary  and  brutal  as  he  was,  and  his  King,  Philip  II., 
who  was  as  stiff-necked  as  the  general,  were  forced  to 
withdraw.  The  "  alcabala  "  could  be  levied  in  Spain 
because  there  was  little,  and  in  most  parts  of  the 
country  there  was  no,  movement  of  trade.  Each 
district  used  up  its  own  raw  material,  and  the  goods 
passed  direct  from  the  handicraftsman   to   the  pur- 


248  DIAZ 

chaser.  In  such  an  unindustrial  state  of  a  population 
it  is  indeed  difficult  to  see  how  the  vast  majority  are 
to  be  made  to  contribute  to  the  revenue  except  in  some 
such  way.  A  bad  tax  must  be  imposed  because  no 
other  would  have  any  effect.  If  we  need  a  proof  we 
can  take  the  case  of  British  India.  Our  salt  tax  is  a 
bad  one,  but  it  is  only  by  the  use  of  an  impost  of  this 
character  that  the  huge  majority  of  the  inhabitants 
can  be  made  to  bear  a  part  of  the  taxation.  But  the 
salt  tax  is  a  long  way  short  of  an  alcabala.  If,  how- 
ever, we  can  see  how  this  Spanish  adaptation  of  the 
Roman  "  Vectigal  Rerum  Venalium "  came  to  be 
fixed  on  Spain  and  its  colonies,  we  are  also  forced  to  see 
that  when  imposed  it  had  an  invincible  tendency  to 
petrify  the  population  in  its  stagnancy.^ 

The  "  portazgo "  was  another  inheritance  from 
Rome.  It  was  a  charge  imposed  on  all  ships  which 
entered  a  Mexican  port,  and  was  paid  for  a  licence  to 
trade.  It  was  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  goods 
brought,  but  it  did  not  release  them  from  the  obliga- 
tion to  pay  the  alcabalas.  The  natural  result  was  that 
it  tended,  not  only  to  limit  commerce,  but  to  prevent 
the  rise  of  a  coasting  trade.  For  instance,  all  goods 
brought  into  Lower  California  across  the  Gulf  from 
Sonora  or  Sinaloa,  or  vice  versa,  paid  the  portazgo  as 
well  as  the  alcabalas.  If  brought  in  by  land  from  the 
north,  they  only  paid  the  alcabalas.  So  it  actually 
suited  a  Mexican  trader  better  to  bring  in  his  goods 

^  The  alcabala  was  more  like  the  Roman  "  vectigal,"  because  in  the 
ancient  world  so  large  a  part  of  the  population  lived  as  slaves  or  serfs  on  the 
vast  estates.  Slave  handicraftsmen  worked  up  raw  material  supplied  by 
slave  agriculturists  and  herdsmen.  The  community  was  self-sufficing. 
The  same  conditions  prevailed  on  the  great  landholdings  in  Mexico  and  in 
some  parts  of  Spain.  And  on  that  fact  we  may  base  an  observation  for 
which  many  other  supports  could  be  produced.  It  is  that  no  other  country 
has  inherited  so  much  directly  from  the  Roman  Empire,  and  has  so  carefully 
preserved  what  it  inherited,  as  Spain. 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  249 

from  the  United  States  across  the  border  than  to 
buy  from  his  own  countrymen.  The  portazgos  were 
more  limited  in  their  incidence  than  the  alcabalas, 
but  within  their  scope  they  were  quite  as  fatal. 

The  internal  customs  barriers  are  not  so  strange  to 
us  as  the  alcabalas.  We,  in  fact,  had  one  till  Lord 
Randolph  Churchill  swept  it  away — the  shilling  a  ton 
tax  on  coal  imported  into  London.  If  few  noticed  it 
while  it  lasted,  or  now  remember  its  obscure  existence, 
most  of  us  knew  the  French  "  octroi,"  and  many  of 
us  have  heard  of  the  Spanish  "  consumos."  They  are 
municipal  impost  duties  levied  on  whatever  is  to  be 
eaten,  drunk,  worn,  or  burnt  within  the  town.^  But 
these  municipal  dues  were  not  all.  There  were  cus- 
toms barriers  between  province  and  province.  There 
were  in  France  under  the  monarchy,  and  in  Spain  till 
recent  times.  They  survived  in  Mexico,  and  in  spite 
of  all  attempts  at  reform  they  go  on  because  the  local 
authorities  must  have  a  revenue,  and  also  because  a 
part  of  the  money  is  taken  for  account  of  the  central 
Government.     A  piece  of  goods  imported  across  the 

^  As  an  instance  of  how  the  "  consumo  "  works  I  give  this  experience  of 
my  own.  Some  years  ago  an  English  merchant  in  Madrid  sold  a  huge 
steam  threshing  machine  to  a  landowner  in  Granada.  It  had  been  exhibited 
at  an  agricultural  show.  In  order  to  move  it  across  Madrid  from  one 
railway  station  to  another  the  merchant  had  to  hire  a  team  of  oxen — twelve 
in  all.  Now  oxen  when  introduced  into  Madrid  for  the  meat  market  are 
subject  to  "  consumos."  This  team  was  not  to  be  slaughtered,  for  it  was 
brought  in  from  the  country  outside  to  drag  the  weight.  But  the  story  of 
the  machine  and  the  transport  across  Madrid  might  be  a  fraud.  So  the 
town  council  insisted  on  the  deposit  of  the  consumo  as  a  guarantee  of  good 
faith.  The  sum  of  i,ooo  pesetas,  say  £40,  was  paid  on  the  understanding 
that  it  was  to  be  refunded  so  soon  as  the  draught  cattle  had  gone  out  again. 
Here  was  a  ceremony  not  tending  to  the  facilitation  of  business.  But  this 
was  not  all.  The  town  council  liked  to  show  the  best  possible  revenue  ; 
80  it  was  very  punctual  in  insisting  on  the  deposit  of  the  money,  which  went 
duly  down  on  the  receipt  side  of  the  balance.  But  for  the  same  reason  it 
put  off  the  repayment  as  long  as  it  possibly  could.  The  merchant  had  to 
"  hacer  antesala  "  (dance  attendance  in  ante-rooms)  for  some  time  before 
his  deposit  was  refunded  ;  and  was  lucky  if  he  had  not  to  oil  the  wheels  of 
the  official  machinery  with  palm  oil. 


2SO  DIAZ 

frontier  or  at  a  seaport  would  be  taxed  over  and  over 
again  before  it  could  reach  the  customer.  No  wonder 
if  an  article  priced  at  $30  on  the  frontier  costs  $100 
when  sold  to  the  customer  in  an  inland  city.  Sydney 
Smith's  famous  joke  on  the  British  taxation  of  his 
day  was  an  under-statement  of  the  Mexican  fiscal 
system.  There  was  hardly  a  transaction  of  daily  life 
which  had  not  its  corresponding  tax — not  even  a 
marriage,  a  christening,  a  dance,  or  a  funeral.  To 
make  all  safe  the  tariff  of  a  Mexican  town  might,  and 
at  least  in  some  cases  did,  contain  such  a  clause  as 
this  :  "  All  articles  which  are  not  contained  in  the 
present  tariff  remain  subject  to  the  pleasure  of  the 
authorities  of  the  city  of  Guerrero  to  levy  upon  them 
a  contribution  which  they  think  right  and  just." 

We  are  by  no  means  at  the  end  yet.  A  licence  was 
required  for  the  practise  of  any  trade.  In  a  country 
in  which  the  journeyman  workman  rarely  earned 
more  than  20  or  25  cents  for  his  day's  work  he  had  to 
pay  a  monthly  poll  tax  of  12  cents.  This  was  the  old 
Spanish  "  pecho,"  or  breast  tax,  levied  on  all  who  were 
not  "  noble."  It  was  just  the  "  karrach,"  or  tribute 
levied  by  the  Arabs  on  all  Christians.  The  only 
difference  was  that  whereas  they  took  it  from  the 
unbeliever  the  Christian  States  took  it^from  the  trades- 
men and  the  poor  and  exempted  the  gentry. 

And  with  that  detail  we  come  to  what  was  not  the 
least  destructive,  and  still  less  the  least  unjust, 
feature  of  the  Mexican  fiscal  system.  It  has  been 
noted  already  that  the  landowning  class  in  Mexico 
claimed  to  reproduce  the  "  brazo  militar  "  of  the 
mother  country — that  is  to  say,  the  nobles  who 
were  exempt  from  personal  taxes,  and  to  an  extent 
variously  fixed    by  custom  or  royal  privileges  from 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  251 

the  "  alcabalas."  The  Church  was  of  course  equally 
favoured.  Now  it  is  calculated  that  the  whole  of  the 
land  of  Mexico  was  held  by  about  6,000  persons.  This 
figure  does  not  include  the  Indian  communities, 
which  in  out-of-the-way  places  went  on  living  their 
old  communal  life,  tilling  their  bits  of  ground  and 
dividing  the  produce  according  to  rules  older  than  the 
Spanish  conquest.  But  it  did  cover  by  far  the  greater 
part  of  the  country.  These  masters  of  the  land  were 
able  to  defeat  the  humane  Laws  of  the  Indies  to  a 
great  extent.  They  would  combine  to  protect  their 
own  profits  if  for  no  other  purpose.  The  King's  laws, 
as  a  favourite  phrase  of  theirs  had  it,  were  to  be 
"  obedecidas  y  no  cumpHdas  " — obeyed,  but  not 
carried  out.  They  went  on  the  statute-book,  and  they 
went  no  farther.  The  same  power  which  enabled 
them  to  render  the  laws  meant  to  protect  the  Indians 
of  little  effect  was  used  to  save  themselves  from 
taxation.  The  secularisation  of  the  Church  lands 
made  no  difference.  The  plundered  property  passed 
into  the  hands  of  intriguers,  who  got  it  for  nothing, 
or  purchasers  who  paid  derisive  sums,  and  they  con- 
tinued to  escape  taxation.  There  were  land  taxes, 
but  they  were  low  and  were  dishonestly  assessed. 
Land  not  in  actual  cultivation — of  which  there  was 
much  in  the  vast  Mexican  estates — escaped  taxation 
altogether,  even  though  it  was  appreciating  in  value. 
There  are  no  countries  in  the  world  in  which  a  smart 
undeveloped  land  tax  is  more  urgently  called  for  than 
in  the  former  colonies  of  Spain  and  Portugal  in 
America. 

More  might  be  said  without  exhausting  the  subject, 
but  we  have  already  seen  enough  to  enable  us  to  under- 
stand why  the  mere  construction  of  railways  or  the 


252  DIAZ 

improvements  of  ports  might  fail  altogether  to  better 
the  condition  of  the  mass  of  the  population  of  Mexico. 
They  enabled  mine  owners  to  gain  easier  access  to  the 
metal  and  carry  it  to  the  ships  for  export.  They 
enabled  the  merchant  who  imported  such  goods  as 
the  richer  classes  could  afford  to  buy  to  bring  their 
imports  more  rapidly,  and  also  more  cheaply,  to  the 
small  market  open  to  them.  But  while  alcabalas 
continued  to  be  levied  on  the  scale  defined  by  Congress 
in  1885,  and  customs  barriers  stood  round  every  State 
and  every  town,  the  mass  of  the  population  would  be 
never  a  jot  the  better  save  for  such  day's  wage  as  they 
could  earn  in  the  capacity  of  mere  labourers.  This 
was  a  temporary  gain.  For  the  rest  the  very  large 
majority  of  Indians  and  the  mestizos  would  go  on  as 
before — dressing  in  goat-skins  warranted  to  last  for 
years,  the  roughest  of  cotton  shirts,  blankets  woven 
by  their  women  folk,  and  wearing  sandals  made  of  a 
sole  of  leather  and  tied  on  by  thongs  which  they 
fixed  themselves.  The  revenue  grew  by  and  for  the 
capitalist.  The  people  could  not  buy  nor  sell  without 
bringing  a  flight  of  tax-collecting  vampires  down  on 
them.  Their  small  balance  of  money  went  mainly  in 
the  pulque  shop.  No  wonder  if  Mexico  possessed  in 
the  "  Leperos "  one  of  the  very  worst  vagabond 
populations  in  all  the  world.^  A  wailing  song  went 
about  in  Mexico  at  the  very  end  of  Don  Porfirio's 
rule.  "  The  negro  of  Cuba,"  so  it  said,  "  is  free  and 
lives  by  his  day's  pay.  Only  the  Mexican  Indian 
eats  little  and  lives  ill.     He  lives  in  a  poor  hutch. 

1  The  similarity  of  the  word  L6pero  (to  leper)  must  not  deceive  the 
reader.  A  leper  in  Spanish  is  "  leproso,"  or  popularly  *'  gafo."  "  L^pero  " 
is  a  word  of  uncertain  origin,  and  is  supposed  to  be  an  adaptation  of  an 
Indian  word.  Lepers  there  are  in  Mexico,  but  they  are  usually  known  as 
"  pintados  "  (painted  or  blotched). 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  253 

They  pay  him  with  aguardiente,  to  make  an  end 
of  his  race.  All  the  world  knows  it,  my  heart ;  all 
the  world  knows  it."  It  is  "  a  doleful  song  " — 
"  steaming  up  a  lamentation  and  an  ancient  tale  of 
wrong."  ^ 

There  was  a  clear  understanding  in  Mexico  of  the 
evil  consequences  of  the  fiscal  system.  A  conference 
on  the  subject  had  been  held  in  the  capital  during  the 
Administration  of  General  Gonzalez.  The  delegates 
were  competent  judges,  and,  as  the  Spaniards  would 
say,  "  they  talked  pearls."  One  and  all  agreed  that 
while  the  alcabalas  and  the  internal  customs  barriers 
remained  in  existence  the  country  was  doomed  to 
beggary.  But  they  were  equally  unanimous  in 
declining  to  propose  a  remedy.  They  said,  and  with 
truth,  that,  whatever  the  vices  of  these  barbarous 
old  methods  of  taxation  might  be,  they  provided  the 
only  means  by  which  the  States  and  municipalities 
could  raise  a  revenue,  and  they  were  the  sources  of  a 
good  part  of  the  receipts  of  the  Federal  Government, 
This  was  the  vicious  circle  in  which  the  Government 
was  confined.  The  taxes  kept  the  country  stagnant 
and  poor,  but  abolition  would  render  all  administra- 
tion impossible.  It  would  for  one  thing  entail  the 
disbanding  of  the  army,  and  that,  of  course,  meant 
anarchy.     There  were,  no  doubt,  men  in  Mexico  who 

^  I  add  the  Spanish.  Even  a  reader  who  does  not  know  the  language, 
but  will  give  the  vowels  the  broad  sound,  will  be  able  to  catch  the  "  doleful  " 
lilt  of  the  lines  : — 

**  El  negro  de  Cuba  es  libre 

Y  vive  de  sa  jornal. 

Solo  el  Indio  Mexicano 

Come  poco  y  vive  mal 

Vive  en  un  pobre  jacal. 

Le  pagan  con  aguardiente, 

Pa  que  la  raza  se  acabe, 

Lo  sabe  toda  la  gente  mi  vida, 

Toda  la  gente  lo  sabe." 


254  I^IAZ 

were  quite  well  aware  that  the  remedy  was  to  Impose  a 
just  land  tax  and  house  tax  and  income  tax  ;  to  take 
the  alcabala  off  everything  else  and  quadruple  it  on 
pulque  ;  to  lower  the  outrageous  import  duties 
imposed  on  manufactured  goods  for  the  benefit  of  a 
handful  of  mills  which  produced  bad  cotton  shirts  to 
be  sold  at  a  high  price.  But  to  do  all  this  implied  a 
land  valuation,  a  huge  amount  of  work,  and  the 
command  of  time.  It  implied  something  more — 
namely,  that  reform  would  deeply  offend  the  caciques 
who  controlled  the  Governments  of  the  States  and 
the  municipalities,  as  well  as  the  swarms  of  officials 
who  lived  on  tax-collecting — and  bribes  for  not  collect- 
ing— together  with  the  owners  of  houses  and  land  who 
had  hitherto  contrived  to  escape  taxation  nearly  if 
not  altogether.  This  last  class  might  be  politically 
useless — and  indeed  had  proved  that  it  was — but 
under  the  Republic,  as  under  the  old  Spanish 
monarchy,  it  could  act  to  defend  its  pocket.  It 
could,  as  it  often  had  done,  pay  for  a  pronunciamiento. 
That  this  was  no  imaginary  peril  is  proved  by  one 
single  fact.  When,  after  many  years,  there  came  a 
revolt  against  the  "  autocracy  of  General  Diaz," 
the  immediate  cause  of  the  rising  was  that  a 
certain  family  in  Northern  Mexico,  whose  members 
owned  among  them  20,000,000  acres  of  land,  spent 
3^250,000  in  financing  the  outbreak.  In  the  end 
they  brought  murder  on  some  of  themselves,  but 
in  the  interval  they  had  plunged  Mexico  back  into 
anarchy. 

This  was,  if  a  threadbare  image  may  be  used  again 
just  for  once,  the  Augean  stable  which  President  Diaz 
had  to  clean  if  Mexico  was  to  attain  to  its  possible 
level   of   prosperity.     The    attempt   was    made    and 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  255 

persevered  in,  but,  it  is  to  be  feared,  with  something 
far  short  of  complete  success.  Accurate  information 
of  what  was  really  done  is  hard  to  obtain.  Nothing, 
indeed,  is  easier  than  to  find  from  "  The  Authentic 
History  "  of  Senor  Ricardo  Rodrigues,  or  the  life  of 
the  President  by  Senor  Jose  F.  Godoy,  that  the 
abolition  of  the  alcabalas  was  the  constant  care  of  the 
Government,  and  that  steady  progress  was  made  in 
the  good  work.  But  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
neither  of  these  books  makes  as  much  as  a  pretence  to 
being  critical  or  complete.  The  first  is  a  collection  of 
the  President's  speeches  to  Congress  published  when 
he  was  standing  for  his  prolonged  period  in  1904. 
The  second  is  an  electioneering  pamphlet  published  in 
New  York  in  1910,  when  he  was  standing  for  the  last 
time,  and  was  addressed  rather  to  the  American  than 
to  the  Mexican  public.  The  Federal  Government 
might  renounce  the  alcabala  so  soon  as  the  growth  of 
the  national  customs  allowed,  but  that  the  different 
States  dispensed  with  the  old  familiar  method  of 
obtaining  money  is  not  proved.  The  fact,  no  doubt, 
is  that  they  continued  to  be  levied  within  the  different 
States,  or  at  any  rate  some  of  them,  and  to  produce 
all  their  old  bad  effects.  The  inter-State  customs 
barriers  were  certainly  not  wholly  swept  away,  and 
if  they  have  not  reappeared  during  the  recent  troubles 
the  conduct  of  the  adventurers  and  caciques  who 
have  been  tearing  the  poor  country  to  shreds  has 
been  contrary  to  nature. 

Finance  would  in  any  case  be  likely  to  be  the  weak 
side  of  a  Spanish  or  Spanish-American  Government. 
Nothing  in  the  training  of  Don  Porfirio  was  calculated 
to  turn  his  thoughts  in  that  direction.  He  con- 
fessedly managed  the  funds  he  raised  in  the  South 


256  DIAZ 

during  the  French  intervention  with  probity  and 
success  ;  but  that  was  a  simple  business.  The  mer- 
chant shipper  of  the  old  times  carried  a  bag  with  him 
to  sea.  He  put  into  it  what  he  received  for  freights 
and  took  out  of  it  what  he  had  to  spend  for  the  expenses 
of  the  voyage.  What  remained  was  the  profit.  A 
partisan  leader  could  do  as  much,  but  to  understand 
the  principles  of  good  taxation  was  another  and  a 
more  complicated  matter.  The  Spanish  mind  does 
not  turn  readily  to  the  study  of  finance.  It  was 
possible  for  the  President  to  find  a  good  Home 
Secretary  in  Sefior  Rubio,  his  father-in-law,  and  a 
good  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  in  Sefior  Mariscal. 
But  it  does  not  appear  that  he  had  a  good  financial 
adviser  at  his  elbow  till  he  found  one  in  Senor  Liman- 
tour,  the  son  of  a  French  man  of  business,  born  in 
Mexico,  but  not  naturalised  till  he  was  twenty  years 
old.  In  spite  of  all  obstructions,  the  mere  mainten- 
ance of  peace,  even  with  an  accompaniment  of  local 
disorders  in  the  States — which,  let  it  be  noted  once 
more  lest  we  forget,  never  ceased  entirely — the  making 
of  railways  and  so  forth,  the  development  of  mines, 
and  some  improvement  in  agriculture,  produced 
greater  well-being  in  some  classes  and  a  growing 
revenue.  The  world  thought  that  Mexico  was  on  the 
way  to  an  industrial  development  which  would  bring 
prosperity  and  orderly  habits  with  them  ;  and  con- 
tinued to  believe  so  till  the  crash  came.^ 

^  I  am  conscious  that  much  is  lacking  here  for  a  full  account  of  Mexico's 
financial  and  industrial  position,  but  can  only  say  that  the  real  truth  is  not 
to  be  obtained.  Travellers  who  have  been  in  Mexico  since  191 1  have  found 
signs  of  prosperity,  and  have  been  told  that  times  of  trouble  are  not  so  bad, 
because  in  peace  so  much  was  taken  away  to  be  spent  out  of  the  country 
which  now  remains  at  home.  Does  this  mean  anything  except  that  Mexico, 
being  a  debtor  nation,  had  to  export  in  peace  to  pay  its  debts,  whereas  in 
time  of  trouble  it  repudiates  and  keeps  the  things  for  which  it  went  into  debt  ? 
That  gives  an  air  of  prosperity  for  a  time. 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  257 

Yet  while  we  recognise,  as  we  must,  that  much  in  the 
work  done  by  President  Diaz  was  transient  and  super- 
ficial, it  would  be  most  unfair  to  deny  that,  even  so, 
his  achievement  was  honourable.    In  no  other  Spanish- 
American  State  has  a  ruler  been  able  to  increase  the 
revenue  by  the  growth  of  industry  and  to  secure  a 
succession  of  real  surpluses.     In  1896,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  its  history,  Mexico  could  show  a  revenue  of 
$50,000,000  and  an  expenditure  of  $45,000,000.     The 
surplus  made  it  possible  for  the  President  to  relieve 
his  officials  from  the  heavy  deductions  made  from 
their  salaries.     The  revenue  continued  to  increase  till 
it  reached  $101,385,000  in  the  financial  year  1908 — 
1909.     In  the  year  1906 — 1907  the  surplus  had  been 
$29,209,481.     During  this   period  his   treasury  had 
had  to  contend  with  difficulties  which  affected  all 
Governments  but  were  peculiarly  severe  for  Mexico. 
The  depreciation  in  the  value  of  silver  hit  a  country 
which  still  retained  the  white  metal  as  its  standard, 
and  allowed  free  coinage,  very  hard.     Its  currency 
was  discredited,  and  the  chief  of  Mexican  exports  fell 
in  value.     Silver  had  been  freely  coined  in  the  eleven 
private  mints  which  farmed  the  privilege  of  coining 
money  from  the  State.     The  coins  were  an  article  of 
export  brought  by  other  nations  for  use  in  the  Chinese 
trade.     This  flood  of  money  which  was  depreciating 
rapidly  threatened  to  make  the  exchange  ruinous  for 
Mexico.     The  Republic  was  steered  through  the  crisis 
partly  by  stopping  the  mints,  and  partly  by  the  adop- 
tion of  the  gold  standard  in  1902.     It  does  not  in  the 
least  detract  from  the  credit  due  to  President  Diaz 
that  the  actual  manager  of  these  financial  operations 
was  the  Franco-Mexican  Sefior  Jose  Limantour.     An 
admiral  or  general  who  sees  the  wisdom  of  some 


2S8  DIAZ 

suggestion  made  by  a  subordinate  and  acts  on  it  is 
entitled  to  all  the  credit  of  whatever  measure  of  success 
it  may  achieve.     It  is  to  his  credit  that  he  sees  the 
wisdom  of  the  advice,  and  it  is  by  his  authority  that 
the  right  thing  is  done.     To  him  belongs  the  honour  of 
turning  what  was  but  an  idea  and  mere  words  into  a 
profitable  act.     The  chief  in  war  or  peace  who  will 
not  take  advantage  of  the  capacity  of  his  subordinates, 
lest  he  should  be  supposed  to  be  influenced  by  them, 
makes  an  exhibition  of  gander  vanity  ;  and  moreover 
he  is  not  doing  his  best  to  fulfil  his  duty.     Now  it  has 
always  been  a  great  fault  of  the  Spanish  character  that 
it  has  lacked  the  capacity  to  see  and  give  free  play  to 
the  capacity  of  subordinates.     The  "  mandon  "  will 
do  everything  himself,  and  will  do  nothing  that  may 
appear  to  come  from  another  lest  his  dignity  should 
suffer.     The    type    of    this    too    prevalent    Spanish 
littleness  is  the  immortal  Don  Gregorio  de  la  Cuesta, 
who  hampered  Wellington  during  the  Talavera  cam- 
paign.    He  refused  to  move  his  army  at  the  English 
General's  suggestion  for  fear  that  his  soldiers  should  be 
led  to  doubt  his  wisdom  when  they  saw  him  act  by 
advice.     In  a  very  brief  space  he  was  ignominiously 
bundled  out  of  the  position  he  had  refused  to  leave 
when  he  might  have  moved  freely.     There  was  nothing 
of  Don  Gregorio  in  President  Diaz.     He  never  gave  a 
better  proof  of  his  fitness  to  rule  than  when  he  detected 
and  utilised  the  financial  capacity  of  Senor  Limantour. 
Critics  who  were  enlightened  by  the  course  of  events 
after  1910  have  blamed  Don  Porfirio  on  the  ground 
that  the  surpluses  shown  by  the  revenue  in  the  last 
years  of  his  Administration  were  largely  gained  by 
making  dangerous  reductions  in  the  army.     But  it  is 
more  than  doubtful  whether  the  evils  which  followed 


PRESIDENT   FOR  GOOD  259 

the  revolt  financed  by  Madero  in  19 10  could  have 
been  averted  by  the  maintenance  of  a  larger  army. 
What  if  the  army  did  as  it  had  often  done  before  in 
Mexican  history — ^what  if  it  divided  against  itself  ? 
The  smaller  army  did  so  divide,  and  a  larger  would 
probably  have  behaved  in  just  the  same  way.  A 
tendency  to  disorder  and  a  lack  of  national  sentiment 
are  bred  in  the  bone  of  all  Mexico,  of  which  the  army 
is  but  a  part,  and  will  out  in  the  flesh.  This  sup- 
position that  a  stronger  army  would  have  kept  the 
peace  for  ever  is  but  a  mere  guess. 

It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  fact  that  such  measures 
as  the  purchase  by  the  State  of  railways  and  the 
drainage  of  the  Mexico  valley  represented  in  different 
degrees  lasting  gains.  By  every  purchase  of  a  railway 
the  country  did  to  some  extent  free  itself  from  tribute 
to  the  foreign  capitalist.  It  was  far  too  poor  to  free 
itself  entirely.  These  transactions  appeared  to  give 
promise  that  the  days  when  Mexico  was  looked  upon 
as  a  species  of  booty,  and  when  it  granted  concessions 
wholesale  in  order  to  attract  foreign  capital,  and  in 
many  cases  to  speculators  of  very  indifferent  character, 
might  be  passing  away.  The  purchase  of  the  Vera- 
cruz-Pacific line  in  1904  was  a  case  in  point.  This  line, 
which  must  not  be  confused  with  the  Veracruz-Mexico, 
was  built  by  an  American  company.  The  builders 
got  into  difficulties  and  suspended  payments  in  1903. 
As  the  line  started  from  Cordoba,  on  the  Veracruz- 
Mexico  route,  and  ran  south  to  the  railway  across  the 
isthmus  of  Tehuantepec,  it  was  of  importance  to  the 
Government  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  communi- 
cations with  and  its  hold  over  Oaxaca.  And  then  it 
provided  a  connection  between  the  Gulf  and  the 
Pacific.     A   certain   element   of   politics   or   of   self- 

s  2 


26o  DIAZ 

defence  supplied  a  motive  for  the  measures  which  the 
Mexican  Government  took  to  acquire  control  of  the 
Central  and  the  National  lines.  Both  were  built  by 
American  capital,  and  they  connected  Central  Mexico 
with  the  United  States.  The  first  crosses  the  frontier 
at  El  Paso  del  Norte  on  the  Rio  Grande  and  reaches 
the  capital  by  the  great  plain.  The  National  enters 
the  Republic  at  Laredo  in  Texas  and  runs  to  the  capital. 
It  was  completed  as  a  narrow-gauge  line  in  1888  and 
widened  by  1903.  In  this  case  the  Government  of 
President  Diaz  acquired  a  commanding  interest  and 
the  control  of  the  lines  in  order  to  protect  itself  against 
possible  dictation  on  the  part  of  American  capitalists. 
Of  course  the  chance  that  such  measures  as  these 
would  prove  of  lasting  benefit  to  the  country  depended 
on  how  far  it  could  continue  to  possess  an  honest  and 
businesslike  Government. 

The  drainage  of  the  valley  was  a  gain  pure  and  simple 
if  only  because  it  resulted  in  an  immense  saving  of 
life.  The  actual  work  could  be  adequately  described 
only  by  an  engineer,  or  by  one  not  ignorant  of  the 
engineer's  art.  Yet  without  that  skill  we  can  all  of 
us  look  at  a  mechanical  achievement  of  this  order  from 
the  point  of  those  for  whom  it  is  done.  The  valley  of 
Mexico  is  a  great  bowl  of  which  the  rim  is  formed  by 
mountains.  The  water  drains  from  the  mountains 
into  the  valley  and  has  no  natural  exit.  When  the 
Spaniards  entered  "  The  Valley,"  as  they  called  it,  par 
excellence,  the  soil  was  still  largely  covered  by  forests 
which  held  the  water  and  delayed  evaporation.  The 
Aztec  "  pueblo  "  Tenochtitlan,  on  the  site  of  which 
the  city  of  Mexico  now  stands,  was  surrounded  by 
what  the  Spaniards  called  a  lake,  but  what  appears  to 
have  been  in  reality  a  very  watery  swamp,  which  after 


PRESIDENT  FOR  GOOD  261 

a  rainy  season  and  the  melting  of  snows  was  entirely 
covered,  and  became  navigable  by  vessels  of  shallow 
draught.  Within  a  few  generations  of  the  conquest 
the  Spanish  hatred  of  trees  which  has  desolated  large 
parts  of  their  own  country  had  begun  to  produce  its 
effects  in  "  The  Valley."  The  forests  began  to  go, 
the  balance  of  water,  and  of  wood  to  absorb  and  hold 
the  water,  was  upset.  Being  no  longer  confined  as  it 
had  been,  the  drainage  from  the  hills  flowed  more 
rapidly  where  the  slopes  gave  it  free  way.  The  position 
of  the  lasting  deposits  of  the  waters  which  drained 
from  the  hills  shifted.  The  alternations  between  the 
lowest  and  the  highest  levels  of  the  lakes  became  more 
violent.  The  city  came  to  stand  not  in,  but  on  the 
side  of,  its  lake,  which  was  the  lowest  of  the  three  in 
the  valley.  So  it  was  increasingly  menaced  at  the 
times  of  high  floods.  Apart  from  this  chronic  peril, 
the  city,  because  of  its  position,  was  subjected  to 
another  and  perhaps  a  worse  evil. 

It  stood  almost  on  the  level  of  the  lake  into  which 
it  was  drained.  The  sewers  had  a  very  slight  fall. 
Therefore  the  refuse  was  not  carried  well  clear. 
What  was  borne  away  went  to  fill  up  the  lake  and 
create  a  further  obstruction  for  the  drains.  At  last 
the  city  stood  on  a  vast  network  of  cesspools.  Only 
the  extreme  dryness  of  the  climate,  due  to  the  height 
of  the  valley  above  the  sea,  preserved  the  population 
from  being  wholly  destroyed  by  disease.  It  escaped 
this  fate  because  refuse  when  exposed  to  the  air  dries 
hard.  Even  so  the  death-rate  rose  to  sixty  in  the 
thousand,  or  more  than  twice  the  figure  of  Bombay. 
The  Spaniards  are  not  a  provident  people.  If  they 
had  been  more  in  the  habit  of  looking  ahead  carefully, 
Hernan  Cortes,  who  was  one  of  the  wisest  of  them, 


262  DIAZ 

would  not  have  allowed  himself  to  be  tempted  to 
found  his  city  on  the  site  of  the  Aztec  "  pueblo."  He 
would  have  chosen  a  higher  position,  of  which  he  could 
have  found  many  and  good  in  "  The  Valley."  Pride 
and  a  wish  to  plant  his  foot  on  the  very  neck  of  the 
conquered  pagan  misled  him.  By  his  decision  the 
city  which  was  for  long  the  greatest  in  the  New  World 
was  doomed  to  perpetual  danger  and  disease.  In  the 
first  times  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  necessity 
for  taking  precautions  had  become  so  pressing  that  the 
task  was  taken  in  hand.  But  it  was  not  taken  in  the 
right  way.  Dams  were  built  round  the  city  to  keep 
out  the  floods,  and  of  course  they  blocked  the  exit  of 
the  drainage.  A  great  attempt  to  provide  an  outlet 
for  the  overflow  of  "  The  Valley  "  waters — a  true 
"  obra  de  los  Romanos  " — was  promoted  by  the 
viceroys.  It  was  the  huge  cutting  of  Nochistongo. 
The  cutting  is  used  by  the  Central  Railway,  but  it 
never  served  the  purpose  it  was  meant  for.  The 
viceroy's  Dutch  engineer  Maartens,  who  transliterated 
his  name  to  Martinez,  misjudged  his  problem.  The 
work  was  done  in  the  too  common  Spanish  way — by 
spasms  of  feverish  activity  under  the  stimulus  of  recent 
disaster,  alternating  with  long  intervals  of  neglect. 
Multitudes  of  Indians  perished  by  forced  labour  and 
bad  management,  and  "  The  Valley  "  was  not  drained. 
The  Republic  and  Maximilian's  Government  found 
the  problem  still  to  be  solved.  Plans  were  made, 
foreign  engineers  were  called  in,  but  resources  were 
lacking.  They  were  not  available  till  after  President 
Diaz  had  been  firmly  seated  in  1884 ;  and  then 
twenty  years  passed  before  the  outlet  which  now 
drains  "  The  Valley  "  to  the  north  and  into  the  bed 
of  the  Tula  river,  which  reaches  the  sea  at  Tampico, 


PRESIDENT  FOR  GOOD  263 

was  completed.  The  work  was  at  first  entrusted  to  a 
British  firm,  and  when  the  enormous  cost  of  keeping 
their  works  clear  of  water  as  they  went  on  compelled 
them  to  withdraw,  it  was  completed  as  a  State  under- 
taking at  an  expense  of  $9,000,000.  A  canal  35  kilo- 
metres long  running  from  the  north  of  the  city  carries 
the  water  to  a  tunnel  of  ten  kilometres  which  opens  on 
the  valley  of  Tequixquiac.  It  was  a  great  date  in  the 
modern  history  of  Mexico  when  President  Diaz  in 
1903  broke  through  the  last  screen  of  rock  with  a 
pick  and  could  say  that  after  more  than  180  years  of 
labour,  error,  and  delay  the  work  was  done.  Even 
then  a  price  had  to  be  paid  for  the  original  mistake  of 
the  Conquistador.  When  during  the  Administration 
of  President  Lerdo  or  of  President  Juarez  an  American 
firm  of  engineers  was  consulted,  they  doubted  whether 
the  drainage  could  be  carried  out  at  all,  and  they  added 
that  if  it  ever  were  the  withdrawal  of  so  much  water 
from  the  soil  would  probably  bring  the  city  of  Mexico 
down  in  ruins  through  the  shrinking  of  the  ground 
and  the  settling  of  the  foundations.  Their  fears  and 
doubts  were  excessive ;  but  the  soil  has  shrunk  and 
the  foundations  have  settled,  so  that  much  of  the 
city  is  out  of  the  perpendicular. 

Finance  is  confessedly  of  vital  importance  for  all 
nations  at  all  times,  but  in  telling  the  life  of  statesmen 
and  rulers  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  is  not  often 
necessary  to  dwell  on  their  patronage  of  public  works. 
In  the  great  settled  States  of  the  modern  world  it  is  no 
more  necessary  to  insist  on  their  merits  in  that  way 
than  on  their  achievements  in  the  slaughter  of  savage 
monsters.  Yet  there  was  a  time  when  the  leader  of 
men  had  need  to  be  a  mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord, 
because  superiority  had  to  be  established  over  the 


264  DIAZ 

wild  beasts  which  contended  with  the  human  animal 
for  the  dominion  of  the  earth.     A  ruler  of  Mexico  was 
first  bound  to  see  that  his  country  was  provided  with 
the   instruments    of   industry,   which   in   a    settled, 
prosperous    State   are   the   products   of   the   normal 
activity  of  the  community.     When  Carlyle  was  writing 
his   admirable   essay   on   the   Despot   of    Paraguay, 
Francia,  he  rebuked  one  of  his  authorities  who  had 
laughed  at  the  South  American  "  Perpetual  Dictator  " 
for    publicly   using    a    theodolite   in    the    streets    of 
Asuncion.     ''  O  Robertson,"  he  asks,  "  if  there  was 
no  other  man  who  could  observe  with  a  theodolite  ?  " 
President   Diaz  was   better  helped   than   Rodriguez 
Francia,  but  in  the  main  his  position  in  an  anarchical 
Spanish-American  community  was  the  same.     He  had 
to  stand  over  everything  and  see  the  work  done.    His 
enemies  have  asserted  that  his  merits  in  the  matter 
were  small,  for  the  needful  roads,  railways,  harbours, 
and  drainage  would  have  been  without  him.     How 
do  they  know  ?     The  palpable  fact  is  that  through 
him  they  were  done — and  the  rest  is  guesswork. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE    INDIAN    PROBLEM 


To  have  brought  the  finances  into  good  order,  and 
to  have  provided  the  Republic  with  the  means  of 
attaining  to  the  level  of  prosperity  at  which  a  recur- 
rence of  the  old  disorders  would  be  intolerable,  was 
much.     But  it  was  far  from  being  enough  to  secure 
the  future  of  Mexico.     What  remained  to  be  done  was 
to  inspire  the  whole  population  with  an  understanding 
of  the  value  of  order,  and  a  desire  for  prosperity.     A 
strong  ruler  who  could  rely  on  the  army  could  do  the 
first.      But  no  strength  of  personal  character,  and  no 
military  force,  could  do  the  second  by  themselves. 
They  required  the  co-operation  of  the  people  who  were 
to  be  governed.     And  in  Mexico  that  co-operation 
was  lacking,  not  altogether,  but  very  largely.     Senor 
Limantour  is  reported  to  have  said   that  the  great 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  development  of  the  pro- 
sperity of  Mexico  has  been  that  a  bare  20  per  cent,  of 
the  Mexicans  care  for  those  material  advantages  which 
are  desired  by  more  developed  or  more  ambitious 
races.     And  this  is  what  is  meant  here  by  the  Indian 
Problem.     The  name  does  not  imply,  and  is  not  meant 
to  imply,  that  80  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  Mexico 
is  of  pure  Indian  blood.     Whatever  the  proportion 
may  be  (and  the  facts  are  very  ill  known),  it  is  not  so 
high  as  that.     But  a  large  number  of  the  mestizos  are 
far  more  Indian  than  white,  not  only  in  blood,  but  in 
ways  of  thinking  and  of  life.     They  are  part  of  the 
Indian  problem,  and  that  is  just  this  :   "  How  are  you 


266  DIAZ 

to  persuade  men,  who  do  not  value  what  civilised 
Europeans  or  citizens  of  the  United  States  consider 
as  indispensable  things,  to  work  in  order  to  gain  them 
as  the  European  will,  and  to  desire  what  he  desires  ?  " 
If  they  cannot  be  persuaded,  how  are  they  to  be 
forced  ?     For   if  Mexico   is  to   become  orderly  and 
industrial  they  must  needs  be  brought  to  give  their 
aid.     They  are  the  rank  and  file  of  the  whole  industrial 
army,  and  without  their  co-operation  nothing  per- 
manent, nothing  which  will  raise  the  whole  body  of 
the  population,  can  be  done.     It  is  hard  for  us  to 
realise  that  there  are  peoples  who  would  not  value  the 
things  we  value  if  only  they  had  the  chance  of  knowing 
them,  and  yet  it  is  true.     We  must  not  suppose  that 
because  an  Indian  here  and  there  might  rise  as  Juarez 
did,  or  as  a  few  had  done  in  the  Church  under  colonial 
rule,  the  whole  of  them  had  any  desire  to  change  their 
way  of  living.     The  contrary  was  the  case.     Neither 
are  we  to  suppose  that  because  they  were  unhappy  and 
believed  themselves  to  be  oppressed  (as  they  did)  they 
wished  to  enjoy  the  kind  of  existence  acceptable  to 
prosperous  white  men.    Their  grievance  was  that  they 
were  not  allowed  to  live  in  their  own  ways.     Of  these 
there  were  two — the  way  of  the  wild  Indian,  who  was 
a  hunter  and  a  raider  ;   the  way  of  the  tame  Indian, 
who  would,  if  he  could,  have  lived  a  communal  life 
in  his  traditional  style.     Until  this  great  and  torpid 
obstruction  to  a  healthy  national  life  is  removed, 
Mexico  will  not  only  not  be  entitled  to  take  a  place 
among  civilised  States,  but  it  will  not  even  be  the  home 
of  a  real  nation. 

If  President  Diaz  made  no  attempt  to  conquer  this 
hostile  condition  to  his  country's  true  welfare  he  must 
stand  condemned  as  a  statesman.     A  mere  interval  of 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  267 

Internal  peace  maintained  by  a  vigorous  police  is  a 
good  for  so  long  as  it  lasts.  But  it  may  go  and  leave 
nothing  behind  it.  A  statesman  is  a  ruler  who  does 
leave  something  done  for  ever,  and  something  not 
merely  material,  not  only  roads  or  bricks  and  mortar. 
If  all  Diaz  was  able  to  achieve  were  measures  of  violence 
which  intensified  old  evils  and  perpetuated  old  and 
cruel  injustices,  then  he  stands  ill  as  a  statesman  and  as 
a  man.  Now  it  is  a  fact  which  his  biographer  is  bound 
to  face  that  Diaz  has  been  accused  both  of  failing  to 
try  to  improve  the  lot,  and  with  it  the  character,  of 
this  vast  Indian  population  of  Mexico,  and  of  acts 
which  intensified  injustice  and  cruelty.  The  floods 
of  praise,  often  fulsome  in  tone,  poured  out  by  his 
admirers,  official  and  voluntary,  have  had  a  counter- 
part of  invective.  The  tone  of  these  hostile  j  udges  does 
not  indeed  inspire  full  confidence.  They  are  too  much 
addicted  to  mere  shrieks  of  invective,  and  they  show 
absolute  credulity  in  accepting  every  tale  of  cruelty 
or  corruption  they  may  have  heard.  Their  rule  of 
criticism  is  too  often  no  more  than  this,  that  whatever 
is  said  to  the  credit  of  Don  Porfirio  is  a  proof  of  the 
sycophancy  or  the  self-seeking  of  the  witness.  What- 
ever is  said  in  the  way  of  abuse  is  to  be  accepted  with 
confidence  because  it  is  hostile.  Yet  there  are  certain 
facts  which  are  not  to  be  denied.  The  plantations  of 
Yucatan  cannot  be  hidden,  nor  can  the  fate  of  the 
Yaquis.  If  they  are  what  we  are  told,  and  if  President 
Diaz  was  responsible  for  perpetuating  the  first  and 
for  bringing  about  the  second,  a  very  great  deduction 
must  be  made  from  the  measure  of  praise  which  ardent 
admirers  have  considered  his  due.  Such  things  could 
not  stand  alone.  Exceptions  of  that  kind  are  not 
heard   of   in   countries   where   a    Government   hates 


268  DIAZ 

iniquity.     They  stand  out  because  they  are  extreme 
examples  of  a  prevailing  condition. 

A  few  sentences  must  be  enough  to  deal  with  the 
case  of  the  true  wild  Indians.    They  did  not  constitute 
a  serious  difficulty  except  on  the  northern  frontier, 
where  they  were  represented  by  the  Apache  race  in  all 
its  many  subdivisions.     Good  kind-hearted  people  are 
apt  to  be  shocked  when  they  hear  it  said  that  there 
is  nothing  to  be  done  with  such  human  beings  as  these 
cruel  red  men  were  but  to  suppress  them.     And  yet  it 
is  the  unhappy  truth.     They  were  our  fellow-men, 
and  they  were  what  they  were  because  they  had  been 
produced  by  very  ancient  conditions.     But  these  same 
ancient  conditions  had  so  fixed  them  that  they  had 
lost  the  power  to  change.     In  the  great  human  family 
they  represented  those  individuals   who  are   to   be 
found  everywhere  who  are  born  callous  and  greedy 
and  incapable  of  recognising  their  obligations  to  others. 
Every  society  has  to  suppress  them,  if  not  by  the 
swift  process  of  capital  punishment,  then  by  segregat- 
ing them  and  leaving  them  to  die  slowly  within  four 
walls.     It  was  not  the  case  with  these  untamable 
Apaches  that  they  could  not  but  be  what  they  were. 
In  the  country  over  which  they  roamed  to  plunder  and 
murder    there    were    kindred    red    men   who    built 
''  pueblos,"  tilled  the  soil,  and  used  arms  only  to 
defend  themselves  against  the  Apaches.     For  genera- 
tions the  province  of  Sonora  was  protected  against 
them  by  the  valour  of  the  Opatas,  who  were  "  pueblo  " 
Indians.     The  people  of  the  pueblos  learnt  something 
from  the  white  men,  even  if  it  were  only  to  breed  cattle. 
They  listened  to  the  priest,  and  if  all  they  learnt  from 
him  was  superstition  the  fault  was  not  wholly  theirs. 
The  Apache  took  nothing  but  what  must  needs  be 


THE   INDIAN  PROBLEM  269 

used  for  evil.  All  the  subdivisions  of  the  race  were 
not  equally  malignant,  but  as  a  rule  the  Apache  took 
only  what  would  increase  his  powers  to  kill.  If  he 
learnt  to  use  the  horse,  that  was  because  he  employed 
it  to  raid  farther  and  faster.  If  he  acquired  any 
manufactured  article,  it  was  one  that  would  serve  for 
war.  When,  therefore,  at  the  beginning  of  his  second 
Administration  President  Diaz  did  enter  into  co- 
operation with  the  United  States  troops  to  suppress 
the  Apaches  by  downright  killing,  or  by  confining 
them  to  reservations  where  they  withered  in  pauperism 
and  hopeless  competition  with  the  industrial  supe- 
riority of  the  white  man,  he  was  only  discharging 
the  elementary  duty  of  a  ruler. 

The  case  of  the  Apaches  along  the  northern  frontier 
was  a  very  simple  one.  But  there  were  other  wild 
Indians  whose  case  was  nowise  simple.  The  long 
anarchy  which  began  in  18 10  had  completed  the 
destruction  of  those  ecclesiastical  missions — Jesuit 
and  Franciscan — which  had  honestly,  for  some 
generations,  done  their  best  for  the  Indians.  The 
best  they  could  think  of  was  to  keep  them  in  a  state 
of  perpetual  childhood  because  they  were  not  gente  de 
razon,  not  rational  creatures,  and  because  "  of  such  is 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  Even  before  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  Jesuits  the  missions  had,  in  the  judgment 
of  their  critics,  somewhat  declined  from  their  first 
standard.  By  the  constant  inculcation  of  childish- 
ness they  had  themselves  become  childish.  After 
the  suppression  the  missions  declined  still  further 
under  the  rule  of  the  Franciscans.  The  revolution 
ruined  them,  and  in  the  frightful  confusion  which 
ensued  their  flocks  reverted  to  savagery  of  a  vagabond 
order.     How  to  bring  them  back  to  a  settled  life  was 


270  DIAZ 

the  great  question  which  pressed  on  the  honour  and 
the  conscience  of  the  rulers  of  Mexico.  They  were 
scattered  about  in  many  parts  of  the  RepubHc,  but 
mainly  in  the  northern  regions.  The  painful  facts  are 
that  for  long  nothing  was  done,  and  that  very  little 
has  been  done  to  this  day.  The  remedy  which  suggests 
itself  as  the  best  available  would  have  been  to  collect 
them,  or  entice  them  to  collect,  in  conditions  which 
as  nearly  as  might  be  would  represent  the  kind  of 
orderly  life  they  understood — that  of  the  "  pueblo  " 
Indians.  But  if  that  was  to  be  done  those  "  pueblo  " 
Indians  who  still  survived  in  a  fair  state  of  order  and 
prosperity  must  be  justly  treated.  The  treatment 
they  received  is  but  too  fairly  represented  by  the  story 
of  the  Yaquis.  As  it  is  typical,  and  as  it  touches  the 
reputation  of  President  Diaz  very  closely,  the  tale 
must  be  told  at  some  length.  Writers  who  made  it 
their  business  to  praise  everything  the  President  did 
without  stint  have  spoken  of  these  Indians  as  blood- 
thirsty savages.     Let  us  look  at  the  facts. 

This  Indian  people  came  first  in  contact  with  the 
Spaniards  in  1533.  Cortes  was  still  in  the  country 
and  was  sinking  a  large  part  of  his  great  fortune  in 
voyages  of  exploration  to  the  north-west  in  search  of 
the  passage  which,  as  he  believed,  must  exist  between 
the  Atlantic  and  the  North  Pacific.  Some  of  his 
rivals  were  engaged  in  the  same  work.  One  of  them, 
Nuiio  de  Guzman,  pushed  up  by  land  through  Sonora 
in  search  partly  of  the  passage,  partly  of  gold  mines. 
The  first  Eldorado  of  the  Spaniards  was  in  ''  Quivira," 
a  fantastic  kingdom  placed  by  imagination  in  the 
modern  Arizona  or  in  New  Mexico.^     In  the  course  of 

^  The  Quivira  which  did  come  into  existence  was  a  later  Spanish  settle- 
ment in  New  Mexico. 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  271 

his  advance  he  crossed  two  rivers  which  run  from  the 
Sierra  Madre  to  the  Gulf  of  California — the  Moyo  and, 
north  of  it,  the  Yaqui.     Two  peoples  known  to  the 
Spaniards  by  the  names  of  these  rivers  occupied  their 
valleys.     They    were    settled    people    who    lived    in 
pueblos  and  raised  crops,   and  they  were   kindred. 
The   Yaquis  were  the   most  numerous   of  the  two. 
They  offered  a  stout  opposition,  and,  though  defeated 
by  the  better  arms  of  the  invaders,  they  inspired  the 
Spaniards  with  a  certain  measure  of  respect.     The 
two  came  to  terms.     The   Spaniards  acknowledged 
the  Yaquis  as  the  owners  of  the  valley.     The  Yaquis 
accepted  a  priest  and  a  mission.     Throughout  the 
whole  colonial  period  they  lived  on  tolerable  terms 
with  the  Spanish  rule,  though  not  without  an  occa- 
sional brush.     The  cause  of  conflict  was  always  the 
same.     The  Yaquis  resented  the  intrusiaa-of-  white 
prospectors  for  mines  and  other  intruders  into  their 
land.     When   provoked    by  these   aggressions,    they 
fought,  and  on  the  whole  with  success.     They  ended 
by  falling  out  with  the  missions,  but  only  when  the 
missionaries  became  too  grasping.     When  the  colony 
became  independent  they  took  all  they  heard  about  the 
rights  of  man  and  equality  and  so  forth  as  being  really 
meant.     They    soon    discovered    that    the    Mexican 
Republicans  did  not  consider  that  those  fine  principles 
applied  to  "  pueblo  "  Indians,  and  they  found  that 
they  were  assailed  by  new  aggressions  on  their  valley. 
So   they   defended   themselves,    as    before,    under   a 
leader  known  as  "  Bandera  "  because  he  carried  about 
a  banner  with  a  picture  of  the  Virgin  on  it,  which  he 
had  taken  from  a  church  and  which,  he  said,  had 
belonged  to  Montezuma.     At  this  time  (1825 — 1828) 
the  Yaquis  were  seen  by  our  countryman,  Lieutenant 


272  DIAZ 

R.  W.  H.  Hardy,  R.N.,  a  gentleman  who  had  taken 
part  in  the  conquest  of  Java  and  in  the  expedition  to 
New  Orleans,  and  who  in  the  times  of  peace  and  no 
employment  was  prospecting  for  pearls  in  the  Gulf  of 
California.     And  this  is  his  judgment  on  them  :  "  The 
Yaqui  nation  is  spread  over  every  part  of  the  province. 
They    are    miners,    gold-diggers,    pearl-divers,    agri- 
culturists, and  artisans  ;   and  in  the  arts   of  peace, 
by  far  the  most  industrious  and  useful  of  all  the 
other  tribes  in  Sonora."     Other  witnesses  bear  out 
Lieutenant    Hardy.      They    note    that    the    Yaquis 
succeeded  in  cattle-breeding,  and  that  they  came  in 
numbers  to  plant  and  take  in  the  harvest  in  parts  o'f 
Sonora  occupied  by  white  settlers.     When  they  had 
earned  their    money  they  went    back  to  the  valley 
which,  by  right  of  occupation   dating  back  for  cen- 
turies and  by  the  written  records  of  Spanish  colonial 
authorities    and    Mexican    Republicans,    was    theirs. 
We  need  not  picture  the  Yaquis  as  mild  children  of 
poetry  and  nature.     They  could  fight  hard  for  their 
rights    and,   like   other   fighters,    could   strike   from 
passion.     If  some  were  stout-hearted,  some,  in  the 
fallen   state   of  human   nature,   would  probably   be 
quarrelsome  and  arrogant.     But  men   do  not  hold 
their  rights  because  they  are  of  unspotted  virtue,  but 
because  they  have  a  title  recognised  by  the  law.     Now 
by  all  the  laws  of  God  and  of  Mexican  men  the  Yaqui 
Valley  belonged  to  the  Yaquis.     "  Qui  terre  a  guerre 
a,"  says  the  French  proverb.     There  were  disputes 
between  them  and  their  kinsmen  the  Moyos   over 
boundaries,  and  in  a  country  where  the  law  was  so 
feeble  as  it  has  long  been  in  Mexico  these  disputes  led 
to   broken   heads.     They  have   produced   the   same 
consequences  in  more  civiHsed  lands.    The  Indians 


THE   INDIAN    PROBLEM  273 

resented  the  intrusion  of  white  trespassers,  and  if  they 
had  not  they  would  have  been  robbed.  But  though 
human  and  therefore  liable  to  passion,  they  were  an  in- 
dustrious people  and  helpful  to  their  white  neighbours. 
We  can  well  believe  that  the  task  of  dealing  at 
once  firmly  and  fairly  with  such  a  population  was 
not  without  its  difficulties.  An  experience  of  three 
centuries  had  rendered  the  Yaquis  suspicious  and 
touchy.  They  were  on  the  outlook  for  aggressions, 
and  prepared  to  repel  them  by  the  only  means  of 
defence  which  had  been  effective  in  the  past.  But 
an  honest  and  humane  Government  would  not  have 
failed  to  understand  that  the  one  condition  on  which 
the  Yaquis  could  be  kept  in  peace  was  absolute  justice 
of  treatment,  and  that  was  impossible  unless  their 
claim  to  the  sole  possession  of  their  land  was  recog- 
nised. It  is  only  too  certain  that  this  condition  was 
lacking.  When  Mexico  settled  down  to  comparative 
peace  during  the  first  Administration  of  President  Diaz 
and  his  successor.  General  Gonzalez,  a  great  revival 
of  agricultural,  mining,  and  other  industry  began  in 
Sonora.  The  State  had  been  half-depopulated  during 
the  early  days  of  the  gold-mining  development 
in  Upper  California.  The  white  inhabitants  had 
swarmed  over  the  border  to  share  in  the  wealth  to  be 
drawn  from  the  mines.  The  Indians  were  left  alone. 
After  1 880  the  tide  of  immigration  set  in  again.  Sonora 
was  known  to  possess  great  natural  resources.  The 
French  enterprises  of  Pindray,  Raousset — Boulbon, 
and  Jecker  had  aroused  interest  in  the  country. 
Mexico  was  naturally  enough  desirous  to  possess  a 
California  of  her  own,  and  very  soon  the  Yaquis  saw 
that  they  were  again  menaced  in  the  enjoyment  of 
their  lands. 


274  I^IAZ 

The  full  truth  as  to  what  happened  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  hard  to 
learn.     Impartial   observers   were   not   likely   to   be 
present.     There  is  much  unsupported  assertion  and 
much  heated  rhetoric  on  both  sides.     But  the  main 
fact  is  not  to  be  denied.     The  Mexican  Government 
took  a  course  which  had  for  its  inevitable  end  the 
destruction  of  the  Yaqui  people.     It  and  its  admiring 
advocates  have  asserted  that  these  Indians  were  a 
horde  of  savages.     Against  this  is  to  be  set  the  testi- 
mony of  American  railway-makers  and  foreigners  of 
several  nationalities  interested  in  Sonoran  mines  and 
land  which  agrees  entirely  with  the  words  of  Lieutenant 
Hardy  quoted  above.     The  fact  appears  to  be  that 
the  Mexican  Government  had  no  idea  how  to  develop 
the  resources  of  Sonora  otherwise  than  by  making 
huge  concessions  of  land  to  "  concessionnaires  "  who 
were  often  its  own  political  supporters.     These  men 
intruded,  prospected,  marked  out  claims,  and  so  forth, 
without  the  least  regard  for  the  rights  of  the  occupiers 
of  the  soil.     The  Yaquis  took  up  arms,  and  then  fol- 
lowed a  war  which  lasted  from  1886  to  the  first  years 
of  this  century.     It  cost  the  Mexican  Government  a 
sum  estimated  at    $51,000,000,  and  it  entailed  the 
destruction  of  the  most  industrious  part  of  the  Indian 
population  of  the  whole  Republic.     For  a  time  the 
Yaquis  made  head,   but  when  the  Mexican  troops 
were  re-armed  with  the  Mauser  rifle  they  were  over- 
powered.    A   remnant    held    out    in    the    Bacetate 
Mountains,  in  the  background  of  that  valley.     The 
great  majority  were  reduced  to  slavery.     They  were 
not  even  enslaved  in  Sonora.     They  were  transported 
in  gangs  under  escorts  of  soldiers  and  rurales  to  the 
sisal    hemp  plantations  of  Yucatan  or  the  tobacco 


THE  INDIAN  PROBLEM  275 

plantations  of  the  Valle  Nacional  and  there  sold,  under 
certain  hypocritical  disguises,  as  slaves. 

The  traffic  reached  its  highest  level  after  1904,  and 
was  as  open  as  ever  was  the  trade  of  the  African  Slave 
Coast  at  its  worst.  The  captives  were  shipped  at 
Guaymas,  the  chief  port  of  Sonora  in  the  Gulf  of 
California.  Thence  they  were  taken  by  steamer  to 
San  Bias,  on  the  Pacific  Coast  in  the  State  of  Jalisco. 
From  San  Bias  they  marched  over  rugged  ground 
escorted  by  soldiers  and  rurales  in  what  was  known  as 
a  "  coffle  "  (i.^.,  cafila  =  caravan)  in  the  days  of  the 
African  slave  trade,  to  San  Marcos  the  farthest  point 
then  reached  by  the  Pacific  branch  of  the  Mexican 
Central  Railway.  The  train  carried  them — men, 
women,  and  children — to  Veracruz,  where  they  were 
shipped  for  Progreso  in  Yucatan.  The  co-operation 
of  the  police  and  the  troops  disposes  of  all  pretence 
that  this  vicious  traffic  was  a  matter  of  private  fraud 
carried  on  without  the  knowledge  of  the  State.  The 
Government  of  Mexico  was  as  much  concerned  in  the 
trade  as  ever  was  a  negro  "  king  "  in  the  kidnapping 
of  the  miserable  creatures  who  were  brought  down 
from  the  interior  to  the  slave  ships  lying  to  receive 
them  in  the  Bonny  river.  When  delivered  in  Yucatan 
$60  a  head  was  paid  for  them  by  the  sisal  planters. 
They  were  not  called  slaves.  Slavery  is  abolished  by 
the  Constitution  of  the  Mexican  Republic.  The  theory 
was  that  they  were  "  peones,"  field  hands,  who,  like 
others  of  their  class  in  Mexico,  were  working  off  debts 
due  to  the  planters.  The  debt  was  the  $60  paid  to 
the  Government  for  the  command  of  their  enforced 
services.^ 

1  The  world  was  shocked  when  the  story  of  the  Yaquis  was  told  by  Mr. 
John  Kenneth  Turner,  of  California,  in  his  **  Barbarous  Mexico."     He  was 


276  DIAZ 

This  is  surely  a  most  deplorable  story  of  a  failure  to 
govern  humanely  and  in  the  interest  of  the  whole 
country.  There  is  worse  to  be  said  of  it,  but  for  the 
moment,  and  until  we  are  done  with  other  stories 
akin  to  that  of  the  Yaquis,  it  is  enough  to  note  the 
administrative  ineptitude  of  the  thing.  In  Mexico, 
which  is  burdened  by  a  great  population  Indian,  or 
nearly  pure  Indian,  in  blood,  thriftless,  degraded, 
half  savage,  or,  what  is  worse,  formed  of  once  tamed 
Indians  who  have  reverted  to  savagery,  no  wise 
Government  would  have  tolerated  the  destruction  of  a 
community  of  men  and  women  who  worked  freely  and 
well,  and  who  lived  an  orderly  life,  raising  crops  of 
maize  and  sugar-cane  within  its  own  borders,  and 
eking  out  its  poverty  by  labour  on  railways  and  by 
taking  in  harvests.  It  would  have  borne  with  the 
natural  suspiciousness  of  the  Yaquis,  and  while  it 
suppressed  the  excesses  of  individuals  among  them  it 
would  have  abstained  from  ruining  the  whole  com- 
munity. To  enrich  a  handful  of  political  hangers-on 
and  speculators  it  took  the  very  opposite  course. 
And  that  is  not  all.  The  sins  of  the  Yaquis,  real  and 
alleged,  were  made  the  excuse  for  a  similar  persecu- 
tion of  other  "  pueblo  "  Indians — Opatas,  Punas,  and 
so  forth.     The  number  of  ^'  bond  servants  "  dragged 

accused  of  hysteria  and  of  being  animated  by  a  personal  grievance.  Mr. 
Turner  does  indeed  write  as  if  the  zeal  of  the  Lord's  house  had  eaten  him 
up.  It  is  not  credible  that  Yucatan  planters  should  have  shown  not  only 
utter  indifference  to,  but  absolute  glee  over,  the  high  percentage — a  third  or 
80 — and  the  very  early  date  of  the  deaths  among  their  purchases.  Men  of 
business  who  had  paid  $60  for  the  labour  of  a  Yaqui  "  bond  servant  " 
cannot  surely  have  rejoiced  over  his  or  her  death  before  the  price  paid  had 
been  worked  off.  Yet  I  accept  Mr.  Turner's  account  of  the  trade  as  sub- 
stantially true — in  the  first  place  because  it  is  borne  out  by  other  testimony, 
and  in  the  second  place  because  it  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the  recent 
BraziUan  rubber  forest  scandal,  and  with  what  I  know,  from  the  testimony 
of  credible  witnesses  given  to  me  in  the  countries  themselves,  to  be  the  case 
in  other  Spanish- American  countries. 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  277 

from  Sonora  to  Yucatan  and  some  other  places  far 
exceeded  the  Yaqui  population  even  if  it  had  lost 
none  of  its  members  in  battle  and  a  remnant  had  not 
saved  itself  in  the  hills.  If  the  fate  of  this  hopeful 
race  stood  alone  it  would  be  a  shameful  blot  on  the 
government  of  Mexico.  But  it  was  not.  It  was  only 
the  most  odious  example  of  similar  offences  against 
humanity  and  true  statesmanship  which  were  com- 
mitted all  over  Mexico. 

The  henequen  or  sisal  hemp  plantations  of  Yucatan 
were  not  supplied  with  forced  labour  from  Sonora 
only.  They  were  helped  to  provide  themselves  with 
bond  servants  from  among  the  native  Indian  popula- 
tion, the  Mayas.  In  this  case  there  was  some  shadow 
of  an  excuse  for  the  brutality  shown  to  the  victims. 
The  Mayas,  to  judge  by  the  buildings  they  have  raised 
during  centuries,  and  long  before  the  Spaniards 
appeared  on  the  coast,  were  endowed  with  a  better 
natural  intelligence  than  other  native  races.  But 
they  had  been  utterly  barbarised  during  their  long 
conflict  with  white  intruders.  There  is  only  one 
name  for  the  whole  history  of  Yucatan  since  it  was 
first  visited  by  Panfilo  de  Narvaez.  It  is  disgusting. 
It  is  one  long  record  of  brutal  aggression  and  bestial 
retaliation.  What  the  Spaniards  did  not  teach  the 
natives  was  taught  them  by  English  logwood  cutters 
in  Campeachy,  a  gang  of  buccaneers,  pirates,  armed 
smugglers,  and  kidnappers.  The  Mayas  proved  very 
apt  pupils.  As  much  of  the  country  was  covered  by 
dense  tropical  forest,  they  continued  to  possess  fast- 
nesses into  which  their  enemies  could  never  penetrate. 
They  defended  themselves — and  the  miasmas  of 
their  swamps  helped  to  defend  them — against  inva- 
sion.    They  sallied  out  to  raid  and  massacre.     The 


278  DIAZ 

long  tale  of  mutual  slaughter  grows  nauseous.  At 
times  the  Spanish  settlements  appeared  to  be  on  the 
verge  of  extinction.  Then  the  white  race  regained 
ground.  As  mere  slaughter  was  accompanied  by  the 
capture  and  subjugation  of  women,  a  half-breed  race 
was  formed.  The  planters  as  a  rule  belong  to  this 
class  of  mestizos.  They  would  prefer  independence 
to  union  with  Mexico,  and  they  do  demand  with 
success  a  very  considerable  measure  of  local  self- 
government.  But  they  need  the  support  of  the 
Republic,  and  so  profess  a  certain  loyalty.  According 
to  what  has  been  the  rule  in  all  Spanish  America, 
these  mestizos  are  more  merciless  to  the  pure  Indian 
race  than  the  Spaniards  themselves.  The  outcome 
of  centuries  of  cruelty  has  been  for  Yucatan  the  domi- 
nation of  a  small  class  of  half-bred  planters  who  grow 
rich  by  the  forced  labour  of  Indian  serfs.  If  the 
possession  of  better  weapons  and  a  great  show  of 
municipal  improvements  in  their  pet  town,  Merida, 
constitute  civilisation,  then  Yucatan  is  civilised.  If 
the  sacrifice  of  a  whole  population  to  the  interest  of  a 
few,  if  cruelty  and  slave-driving,  are  barbarous,  then 
Yucatan  is  in  a  state  of  barbarism.  If  a  planter  is  a 
humane  man,  he  treats  his  slaves  better  than  does  a 
mere  brute.  But  a  condition  in  which  decency  of 
behaviour  depends  wholly  on  the  virtues  of  indi- 
viduals, and  is  not  enforced  on  all  by  the  law,  is  one  of 
barbarism.  And  the  most  humane  of  planters  does 
not  live  on  his  land,  but  in  a  fine  house  in  Merida.  He 
has  an  agent,  an  "  administrador,"  who  manages  for 
him,  and  has  an  ofiice  in  the  town.  The  plantations 
are  ruled  by  overseers  ("  mayordomos  ")  who  are 
expected  to  get  the  work  done.  The  treatment  given 
to  the  bond  servants  depends  on  these  men,  who  are 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  279 

bound  to  show  a  profit.     All  experience  teaches  us  how 
they  have  ever  been  wont  to  secure  the  desired  gain.^ 
Between  these  two  extremes  of  Mexico,  Sonora  to 
the  north-west  and  Yucatan  at  the  south-east,  there 
were  varieties  and  degrees  in  the  treatment  given  to 
the  "  peones  "  and  the  weaker  portions  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Mexico.     In  the  Valle  Nacional,  to  the  south 
of  Cordoba  on  the  Veracruz  to  Mexico  line,  there  was 
a  reproduction  of  the  conditions  which  prevailed  in 
Yucatan.     In  this  case  the  plantations  were  devoted 
to  growing  tobacco.     The  bond  servants  were  largely 
provided  by  the  industry  of  a  class  of  agents  known  as 
"  enganchadores  "  (crimps  :    gancho  in  Spanish  is  a 
hook),  who  corresponded  exactly  to  the  rascals  once 
well  known  in  the  West  of  England  as  "  the  Spirits." 
Their  business  was  to  hire  labourers  for  the  West 
Indian  and  Virginian  plantations.     They  made  lying 
promises,  and  when  their  dupes  reached  their  destina- 
tion they  found  themselves  in  a  condition  of  slavery. 
The  "  enganchadores  "  worked  in  this  way  for  the 
tobacco  plantations.     The  Valle  Nacional  is  long,  is 
shut  in  by  steep  hills  covered  with  tropical  forest,  and 
well  watched  at  its  entry  and  exit  by  the  police.     The 
bond  servants  who  tried  to  escape  were  commonly 
captured  and  brought  back.     A  fine  was  imposed  for 
the  attempt  to  break  their  contract,  and  it  was  added 
to  the  debt  they  were  working  off.     Some,  however, 
did  escape  and  told  their  tale.     The  character  of  the 
Valle  Nacional  was  well  known.     In  addition  to  the 
bond  servants  who  had  been  obtained  in  this  way  there 

^  I  do  not  dwell  on  certain  details  of  flagellations,  the  treatment  of  the 
women,  etc.,  etc.,  on  which  eye-witnesses  have  been  copious.  Such 
abominations  are  incidental  to  slavery  wherever  it  exists.  There  are  Blue- 
books  and  other  sources  of  knowledge  to  tell  us  what  was  done  in  Jamaica 
by  British  men  and  women  who  were  alive  not  very  long  ago. 


28o  DIAZ 

were  others  obtained  in  another  fashion.  They  were 
simply  crimped  by  the  poHce  under  pretence  that  they 
had  committed  minor  offences.  Sometimes  they  had 
committed  them,  and  were  punished  by  the  magis- 
trates by  being  sent  into  slavery.  It  may  be  added 
that  many  of  the  tobacco  planters  in  the  Valle 
Nacional  were  Spaniards.  That  fact  helps  to  account 
for  the  massacre  of  immigrants  from  Old  Spain  which 
occurred  after  the  fall  of  Don  Porfirio  in  191 1. 

The  judicious  reader  of  such  stories  as  these  finds, 
and  rarely  fails  to  use,  an  opportunity  to  express 
doubts  as  to  their  exact  accuracy.  He  suspects 
exaggeration  at  least.  And  often  he  is  right.  The 
witnesses  who  have  been  revolted  by  the  spectacle  of 
wrong  and  misery  do  not  stop  to  look  at  the  other  side, 
to  note  the  cases  where  those  who  have  power  exercise 
it  with  moderation,  nor  do  they  always  remember 
that  those  whose  misfortunes  are  the  result  of  their 
own  misconduct  can  invent  plausible  tales  of  oppres- 
sion. Yet  the  substantial  truth  of  the  pictures  drawn 
of  Yucatan  and  the  Valle  Nacional  is  certain,  and  in 
a  wholesome  state  of  society  the  errors  or  even  the 
sins  of  men  and  women  are  not  punished  by  turning 
them  into  mere  instruments  for  money-getting,  to  the 
advantage  of  small  bodies  of  employers  who  happen  to 
be  useful  to  the  persons  who  command  the  public 
services  for  the  time  being,  and  who  dignify  themselves 
by  the  name  of  "  the  State."  If  judicious  persons 
cannot  believe  that  the  police  and  the  judicial  autho- 
rities can  lend  themselves  to  such  bad  practices  as 
have  been  mentioned  above,  their  knowledge  of 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  America  must  be  greatly  to 
seek.  It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule  to  which  there 
are  few  exceptions  that  no  man  who  approaches  the 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  281 

courts  in  those  countries  can  hope,  we  need  not  say  so 
much  as  for  justice,  but  for  a  bare  leave  to  state  his 
case,  unless  he  comes  with  money  in  his  hand.  The 
money,  it  must  be  understood,  is  not  for  the  payment 
of  lawyers'  fees,  but  as  a  gift  to  the  judge,  in  order  to 
obtain  his  attention.  The  fees  will  have  to  be  paid  in 
due  course.  Again  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  in 
these  countries  what  ought  to  be  judicial  acts  are  often 
performed  by  administrative  officers.  Fines  can  be 
arbitrarily  imposed  ;  no  protest  will  be  listened  to  till 
the  money  is  paid  ;  there  is  no  way  in  which  a  single 
man  can  enforce  a  hearing  of  his  grievance,  and  while 
he  continues  to  complain,  the  authority  goes  on 
imposing  fines.  If  he  fails  to  pay,  he  is  arrested,  and 
then  it  is  a  short  step  to  send  him  to  the  tobacco 
plantations  of  the  Valle  Nacional  or  other  penal 
settlement.  A  distinguished  Argentine  statesman 
who  was  paying  a  visit  to  Europe  was  asked  by  an 
illustrious  personage  whether  there  was  any  adminis- 
tration of  justice  in  his  country.  He  answered 
laconically  "  Algo  "  (some,  or  just  a  little),  and  he  put 
the  case  as  high  as  he  could. ^ 

*  Such  charges  as  these  ought  not  to  be  made  without  evidence  to  support 
them.  I  would  not  repeat  them  unless  they  seemed  to  me  to  be  proved. 
My  experience  goes  to  show  that  they  are  true.  I  heard  on  the  best  authority 
in  Buenos  Ayres  of  a  case  which  shows  what  ill-use  can  be  made  of  an 
administrative  officer's  power  to  fine.  A  commissioner  of  police  for  one  of  the 
districts  of  the  city  wished  to  make  a  mistress  of  the  daughter  of  an  Italian 
tradesman.  As  she  would  not  consent,  and  the  father  supported  her,  the 
commissioner  ruined  him  by  a  succession  of  fines,  and  he  was  driven  to  go 
to  another  town.  But  for  the  fear  of  giving  too  much  offence  to  the  Italian 
Government,  the  man  and  his  daughter  would  probably  have  been  arrested 
as  anarchists  and  would  have  disappeared  from  sight.  It  may  be  remem- 
bered that  a  few  years  ago  the  Itahan  Government  did  forbid  the  engage- 
ment of  its  subjects  for  labour  in  the  Argentine.  It  was  the  only  way  short 
of  a  declaration  of  war  by  which  to  put  a  stop  to  outrages  of  the  kind  just 
mentioned  and  worse.  There  is  no  obscurity  at  all  as  to  the  use  which  is 
habitually  made  of  the  "  anarchist  "  law  in  the  Argentine.  The  son  of  a 
large  employer  of  labour  told  me  frankly  that  it  was  "  terrible,"  but  very 
useful.     "  For,"  said  he,  "  when  my  father  has  trouble  with  one  of  his  men, 


282  DIAZ 

Where  such  administrative  and  judicial  conditions 
prevailed  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  the  great  Indian, 
or  nearly  Indian,  population  of  Mexico  might  have 
bitter  grievances  at  all  times,  and  also  how  their 
sufferings  might  be  intensified  under  the  rule  of 
President  Diaz,  and  because  of  its  very  virtues.  This 
may  sound  hke  a  paradox,  but  a  few  moments'  atten- 
tion will  show  that  it  is  a  mere  statement  of  intelligible 
fact.  Under  the  old  colonial  rule,  and  during  the 
long  anarchy  which  began  to  be  suspended  for  a  time 
about  1877,  Mexico  was  a  very  torpid  country.  The 
Indians  might  have  no  rights,  but  apart  from  the 
forced  labour  of  the  mines,  which  was  of  long  standing, 
nobody  profited  by  demanding  much  from  them. 
The  land  everywhere  to  some  extent,  but  to  a  very 
great  extent  in  the  north,  was  too  big  for  the  people. 
The  peon  could  squat  on  and  work  a  little  piece  of 
ground  for  his  small  needs.  He  might  be  unable  to 
produce  a  title,  but  he  interfered  with  nobody.  It  did 
not  pay  to  drive  him,  for  a  greater  production  would 
have  been  of  no  advantage  when  there  were  few  means 
of  making  a  profit  by  sale.  Except  those  hacendados 
whose  possessions  were  immense,  everybody  was  poor, 
and,  save  a  few  tradesmen,  everybody  was  idle. 

A  great  change  began  when  the  country  settled 
down.  There  was  a  Government  in  power  eager  to 
develop  its  resources  and  compelled  to  invite  the 
co-operation  of  the  foreign  capitalist.  This  being  so, 
the  land  grew  to  have  more  value  as  pasture,  for  culti- 

he  says  to  the  police  *  That  man  is  an  anarchist,'  and  they  take  him  away." 
What  this  means  is  that  the  employer  pays  the  police  a  yearly  sum  for  their 
good-will.  It  also  means  that  a  man  so  arrested  is  sent  to  one  of  the  islands 
on  the  Argentine  coast  and  left  to  support  himself  by  fishing.  He  generally 
dies  of  starvation  in  about  three  months.  Yet  the  Argentine  Republic  is 
more  orderly  and  less  brutal  than  Mexico. 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  283 

vation,  and  for  mining.  And  now  it  became  the 
interest  of  people  who  could  enforce  attention  to  their 
wishes  because  they  held  the  purse-strings  to  insist 
on  a  sharp  examination  of  the  titles  by  virtue  of  which 
the  land  was  used.  The  case  was  complicated  by  the 
fact  that,  land  having  been  superabundant,  and  water 
in  the  greater  part  of  the  country  rare,  what  had  been 
thought  sufficiently  valuable  and  disputable  to  be 
made  matter  of  record  were  not  titles  to  land,  but 
water  rights.  Land  could  be  found  anywhere. 
Water  to  irrigate  it  had  to  be  obtained  by  industry. 
It  follows  that  if  there  was  to  be  a  general  inquisition 
into  titles,  a  quo  warranto,  nothing  could  be  easier 
than  to  show  that  very  much,  perhaps  the  greater 
part,  of  the  land  in  the  Republic  was  "  tierra  baldia," 
that  is  to  say,  unowned  land,  and  therefore  domain  of 
the  State,  and  at  its  disposal  to  give  or  to  sell.  A  no 
less  obvious  consequence  would  be  that  the  purchaser 
or  grantee  of  the  land  could  within  his  own  bounds 
cut  off  access  to  the  water.  A  water  right  was  of 
no  value  to  a  man  who  could  not  use  the  adjacent 
land.  In  these  conditions  it  might  well  happen  that 
grave  injustice  might  be  done,  and  done  with  punc- 
tiHous  attention  to  a  law.  All  that  was  needed  was 
that  the  law  should  allow  a  prospector  to  peg  out  and 
claim  unoccupied  land  and  require  it  from  the  State, 
all  land  which  was  not  held  by  a  producible  title  being 
counted  unoccupied.  And  this  was  the  course  taken. 
By  the  land  law  of  1886  anyone  was  authorised  to 
"  denounce  " — that  is  to  say,  to  point  out — a  space  of 
land  as  "  tierra  baldia  "  and  to  claim  to  acquire  it  on 
payment  of  a  small  due  to  the  State.  The  burden  of 
proof  that  it  was  not  "  tierra  baldia  "  was  thrown  on 
those  who  were  making  use  of  it,  and  occupancy  was 


284  DIAZ 

not  accepted  as  a  title.  There  was  no  Statute  of 
Limitations  in  Mexico,  and  there  was  on  the  part  of  the 
State — t.^.,  the  poHticians  in  office — a  very  firm  grip 
of  the  principle  nullum  tempus  occurrit  regi.  When, 
therefore,  we  hear  in  the  President's  addresses  to 
Congress  of  the  marking  out  of  "  tierras  baldias," 
what  is  to  be  understood  as  implied  is  that  somebody 
poor,  obscure,  and  mostly  Indian  was  squeezed  out  of 
the  corner  he  had  looked  upon  as  his,  to  be  worked  for 
himself.  We  hear,  it  is  true,  that  care  was  taken  to 
provide  "  ejidos  "  for  Indian  villages,  and  if  this  had 
been  done  fairly,  and  under  the  protection  of  an 
independent  judiciary,  it  would  have  been  the  better 
for  Mexico.  But  that  which  depended  for  its  just 
execution  on  the  honour  of  Government  officials  and 
the  independence  of  the  courts  was  not  done  at  all,  or 
was  very  ill  done.  As  a  matter  of  course  only  the 
small  men  suffered.  The  great  landholders,  whose 
titles  were  often  very  doubtful,  could  take  care  of 
themselves.  They  could  make  use  of  interest  to  avoid 
inquisition  into  what  they  wished  to  conceal,  or  they 
could  acquire  a  title  at  a  cheap  rate,  or  stand  in  with 
the  speculative  capitalist. 

As  Mexico  had  to  look  abroad  for  capital,  schemes 
for  development  of  the  resources  of  the  land  had  a 
consequence  which  in  the  end  proved  very  injurious 
to  the  popularity  of  President  Diaz.  It  was  inevitable 
that  a  large  part  of  the  "  tierra  baldia  "  which  was  sold 
to  "  denouncers  "  passed  into  the  hands  of  foreigners, 
of  whom  the  majority  came  from  the  United  States. 
A  jest  much  repeated  in  Mexico  tells  how  a  country- 
man expostulated  with  the  President  on  the  readiness 
he  showed  to  allow  Americans  to  acquire  land,  and 
how  he  answered  that  they  would  have  it  all  some  day, 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  285 

and  might  as  well  be  made  to  pay  while  payment  could 
still  be  demanded.  The  serious  part  of  the  jape  lies 
in  its  inclusion  of  the  fact  that  these  foreign  purchases 
were  lawful  only  with  his  consent.  His  readiness  to 
agree  to  them  must  be  taken  as  proof  of  his  approval 
and  of  a  policy  he  pursued  for  years.  It  goes  with 
other  actions  of  his  which  had  a  disastrous  effect. 
He  encouraged  European  colonists  to  form  land  settle- 
ments, and,  though  the  results  were  but  meagre,  the 
little  done  in  this  way  was  enough  to  rouse  much  angry 
feeling.  The  poor  little  colonies,  mainly  of  Italians, 
were  considered  as  a  menace  by  the  natives.  And 
then  the  President  at  least  allowed  of  an  attempt  to 
introduce  Chinese  and  Japanese  labour.  The  attempt 
was  equally  offensive  to  Mexicans  and  Americans. 
Though  not  much  was  done,  yet  that  little  also  was 
enough  to  provoke  ill-feeling.  The  very  industrial 
virtues  of  the  Chinese  made  them  odious  in  Mexico, 
as  in  the  United  States  and  our  own  colonies,  though 
not  for  exactly  the  same  reasons.  It  would  have 
been  hard  indeed  even  for  Chinese  thrift  to  lower  the 
standard  of  living  of  the  labouring  classes  of  Mexico. 
But  the  fear  was  that  they  would  displace  the  native. 
After  the  fall  of  the  President  a  dreadful  massacre  of 
Chinese  was  made  at  Torreon,  on  the  Texan  border. 
The  immediate  cause  was  the  unfounded  belief  that 
certain  Mexicans  had  been  poisoned  in  a  tavern  kept 
by  a  Chinaman,  but  the  real  cause  was  the  hatred  felt 
for  the  whole  race.  Their  industry  was  their  chief 
sin,  but  it  is  also  a  fact  that  the  floggers  and  bullies 
employed  to  terrorise  the  bond  servants  in  Yucatan 
and  the  Valle  Nacional  were  often  Chinamen,  and  that 
the  women  on  the  plantations  were  compelled  to  live 
with  them  for  the  purpose  of  breeding  little  slaves. 


286  DIAZ 

Against  all  this  evil  we  have  to  put  the  fact  that  the 
outlay  of  foreign  capital  in  Mexico  did  give  increased 
employment  and  raise  wages.  Indirectly  it  helped 
the  "  peones,"  who  were  not  subject  to  the  plantation 
system  ;  and  that,  too,  was  a  gain  as  far  as  it  went. 
But  a  very  general  experience  shows  that  the  dis- 
content born  of  oppression  is  more  loudly  expressed 
when  the  sufferers  begin  to  experience  some  relief. 
As  they  gain  in  strength  their  fear  diminishes,  their 
desires  grow,  and  their  claims  increase.  Of  course, 
they  are  accused  of  ingratitude,  as  the  Mexicans  have 
been.  The  critics  should  remember  that  the  improved 
lot  may  still  be  bad,  and  that  old  memories  rankle. 
Nor  do  the  better  wages  of  a  time  of  industrial 
expansion  always  last,  while  the  vices  of  a  social 
system  are  apt  to  endure.  Mexicans  of  the  labouring 
class  had  always  before  them  the  spectacle  of  the 
caravans  of  Yaquis  who  were  carried  right  across  the 
country  into  slavery  in  Yucatan  or  the  Valle  Nacional, 
and  the  expelled  squatters.  If  they  did  suspect  their 
white  masters  of  a  wish  to  exploit  them,  or  even  get 
rid  of  them  to  make  room  for  Chinese  labour,  their 
distrust  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  absurd. 

In  so  far  then  as  this  Indian  population,  which  was 
often  not  the  less  Indian  because  of  a  slight  admixture 
of  European  blood,  was  concerne4,  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  the  long  Administration  of  President  Diaz 
did  any  lasting  good  or  supplied  any  promise  of 
improvement.  There  is  not  even  evidence  that  the 
President  as  much  as  wished  to  raise  its  moral  and 
intellectual  level.  This  neglect  of  what  ought  to 
have  been  treated  as  an  elementary  duty  cannot  surely 
be  counted  to  him  for  righteousness.  But  before  we 
join  those  who  condemn  him  wholly  let  us  remember 


THE   INDIAN   PROBLEM  287 

that  "  a  man  is  only  a  man."  He  cannot  shake 
himself  quite  free  from  the  inherited  dispositions  of 
the  society  he  lives  in.  If  he  could  he  would  only 
become  alien  to  it  and  incapable  of  governing.  It 
may  look  discreditable  to  Diaz  that  though  he  was 
largely  of  Indian  descent  himself,  and  could  profess 
pride  in  his  Mixteca  ancestry,  he  did  nothing  for 
his  red  kinsmen.  But  Juarez  was  a  pure-blooded 
Zapoteca,  and  he  did  no  more.  He,  too,  married  a 
Creole  wife,  and  forgot  his  people  and  his  father's 
house.  The  truth  is  that  the  Mexican  Indian  who  has 
risen  in  the  world,  and  the  mestizo,  who  is  half,  or 
more  than  half,  European,  alike  wish  to  be  even  as  the 
Creoles  of  Spanish  descent — to  rank  as  whites.  And 
what  else  could  they  be  expected  to  wish  ?  Juarez 
has  been  absurdly  blamed  for  not  turning  Mexico  into 
an  Indian  repubhc.  If  he  had  made  the  attempt  he 
would  have  banded  against  him  all  the  Creoles  and 
all  the  mestizos  who  wished  to  rank  as  Creoles.  In  face 
of  their  hostility  he  would  not  have  lasted  for  a  week. 
Even  if  we  make  the  wild  supposition  that  he  had  tried 
and  had  succeeded,  what  could  he  have  done  ?  He 
could  have  won  only  by  a  general  massacre  of  the 
dominant  classes  and  by  turning  Mexico  into  an 
Indian  Hayti.  The  conquerors  would  have  returned 
to  the  tribal  state  with  its  unvarying  conditions — 
perpetual  war  between  "  pueblo  "  Indians  and  wild 
Indians,  and  the  domination  of  the  softer  tribes  by  the 
more  ferocious.  Long  before  it  had  come  to  that  the 
troops  of  the  United  States  would  have  been  in  posses- 
sion of  all  Mexico. 

Juarez  could  not  wish  for  an  Indian  republic  ;  and 
still  less  could  Porfirio  Diaz.  What  he  was  bound  to 
wish  for  was  the  closer  assimilation  of  Mexico  to  the 


288  DIAZ 

standard  of  a  civilised  European  State  by  the  develop- 
ment of  its  industry  and  the  maintenance  of  peace. 
In  order  that  he  might  succeed  he  had  need  of  money  ; 
and  money  was  to  be  obtained  only  by  the  help  of  the 
foreign  capitalist.  Nothing  was  more  natural  than 
that  he  should  be  chiefly  concerned  to  satisfy  those 
whose  aid  was  indispensable  to  him,  and  that  in  this 
struggle  for  industrial  prosperity  the  Mexican  Indian 
should  have  been  treated  as  a  mere  tool.  That  is  not 
what  would  have  happened  if  the  man  had  been  greater 
and  the  society  about  him  more  healthy  and  higher- 
minded.  In  that  case  the  governors  of  Mexico  would 
have  understood  that  nothing  of  real  lasting  good  was 
to  be  obtained  by  perpetuating  a  great  cause  of 
anarchy.  This  Indian  population  had  always  been 
the  instrument  of  adventurers  and  insurgents  because 
it  was  torpid  subjected  and  so  miserably  poor  that 
it  did  not  lose  by  being  drafted  into  guerrillero  bands 
and  rebel  armies.  So  long  as  it  remained  as  it  was  it 
would  always  serve  that  purpose.  But  Diaz  was  not 
a  great  moral  and  political  reformer.  He  was  a 
vigorous  Spanish-American  "  tyrant  "  who  strove  to 
keep  good  order  and  promote  material  well-being  in 
such  ways  as  his  own  upbringing  and  the  elements  he 
disposed  of  allowed.  Before  he  could  take  in  hand  a 
great  work  of  social  reform  in  Mexico  he  must  have 
had  command  of  a  clean-handed,  competent  adminis- 
trative staff — some  equivalent,  in  fact,  for  our  own 
Indian  Civil  Service,  and  an  independent  judiciary, 
prepared  to  try  to  do  justice.  He  had  no  such  aid, 
and  therefore  could  not  have  done  the  work  even  if  he 
had  wished.  That  he  never  showed  the  wish  deprives 
him  of  all  claim  to  rank  with  the  greater  statesmen. 
It  leaves  him  a  strong  administrator  and  nothing  else. 


THE   INDIAN  PROBLEM  289 

Whether  he  could  have  done  more  if  he  had  tried  to  do 
justice  to  the  Indian  population  is  a  speculative 
question.  We  know  that  he  had  to  learn  before  he 
died  how  little  it  avails  a  country  to  put  money  in  its 
purse  for  a  time  at  the  cost  of  nursing  and  increasing 
the  rage,  hate,  envy,  and  the  sense  of  wrong  which 
provide  the  rank  and  file  of  anarchical  armies. 


CHAPTER  XI 

ANARCHY   WELLS    UP 

Those  of  us  who  have  never  felt  the  temptation  to 
cling  to  power  may  wonder  why  few  rulers  of  men  have 
known  how  to  leave  the  world  before  the  world  left 
them.  What  satisfaction  can  it  be  to  struggle  on 
"  Bankrupt  of  life  yet  prodigal  ease "  ?  In  1904, 
when  his  sixth  term  of  office  came  to  its  end,  President 
Diaz  was  seventy-four.  He  was  still  enjoying  the 
vigour  of  body  which  he  owed  primarily  to  an  excellent 
constitution,  but  in  no  small  measure  to  the  stern 
discipline  he  imposed  on  himself.  None  the  less,  he 
was  old,  and  extreme  age  lay  just  before  him.  His 
place  was  no  ornamental  sinecure,  but  a  heavy  toil. 
He  is  known  to  have  expressed  a  wish  to  retire  and  to 
visit  Europe,  which  he  had  never  seen,  while  it  was 
still  in  his  power  to  enjoy  travel.  Yet  he  stayed,  and 
when  his  seventh  term  of  office,  which  had  been 
prolonged  from  four  to  six  years,  ended,  also  in  19 10, 
he  again  stayed.     Why  ? 

Astute  persons  who  believe  in  nothing  but  their  own 
capacity  to  see  quite  through  the  deeds  of  men  are 
ready  to  provide  an  explanation.  It  was  greed  ;  it 
was  the  love  of  power  ;  and  all  professions  to  the 
contrary  are  but  the  purest  hypocrisy.  And  no  doubt 
it  is  the  fact  that  those  who  have  held  command  are 
unwilling  to  pass  into  the  ranks  again.  We  may 
suspect,  without  pretending  to  sagacity,  that  Diaz  did 
listen,  with   a  predisposition   to   believe,  to   foreign 


ANARCHY  WELLS  UP  291 

envoys,  his  own  ministers,  and  those  about  him  who  are 
known  to  have  told  him  that  he  was  indispensable  and 
to  have  implored  him  to  stay.  Yet  we  can  now  see 
that  they  were  right.  He  alone  stood  between 
Mexico  and  anarchy.  He  was  tied  to  the  stake  and 
must  bearlike  fight  the  course.  By  staying  he  put 
off  the  day  of  danger,  and  a  space  was  given  in  which 
to  prepare  for  the  time  when  his  place  must  needs  be 
vacant. 

The  election,  so  called,  was  not  quite  as  others  had 
been.  There  was  no  opposition,  and  the  part  of  the 
electors  did  not  vary.  But  up  to  this  time  there  had 
been  no  Vice-President  in  Mexico.  The  President  of 
the  Supreme  Court  stood  ready,  as  we  have  seen  in  the 
cases  of  Juarez  and  Lerdo,  to  take  the  accidentally 
vacant  chair.  But  in  1904  it  was  felt  to  be  no  longer 
safe  to  rely  on  the  lawyer  who  happened  to  preside 
over  the  Supreme  Court.  A  politician  trained  to  the 
work  must  be  provided  to  stand  by  the  President 
ready  to  replace  him  if  he  died,  and  to  succeed  him  if 
in  19 10  age  should  have  deprived  him  of  the  capacity 
to  hold  the  reins.  The  precaution  was  wise,  but  the 
choice  made  was  unfortunate.  His  understudy  and  suc- 
cessor was  expected  to  continue  the  same  "  system  " — 
to  keep  the  peace,  to  promote  industry,  and  to  protect 
foreign  capital.  In  order  that  he  might  be  able  to 
fulfil  this  programme  he  must  have  a  certain  measure 
of  popularity,  the  confidence  of  the  capitalists,  and 
the  capacity  for  hard  work.  There  was  a  time  when  it 
was  assumed  that  in  the  new  industrial  age  the  most 
appropriate  successor  for  Don  Porfirio  would  be  his 
Minister  of  Finance,  Don  Jose  Limantour.  But  there 
was  a  difficulty  in  the  way.    The  Constitution  provided 

that  the  President  of  Mexico  must  be  native  born,  and 

u  2 


292  DIAZ 

Seiior  Limantour  was  by  birth  a  Frenchman,  and  had 
not  been  naturalised  till  he  was  twenty.  It  is  true 
that  Constitutions  are  subject  to  revision  in  Spanish 
America,  and  that  Congresses  will  commonly  revise 
or  do  whatever  other  thing  they  are  bid  to  do.^  But 
in  1904  the  anti-foreign  feeling  was  rising,  and  the 
selection  of  a  financier  of  alien  origin  might  have  been 
dangerous. 

The  understudy  chosen  was  Don  Ramon  Corral. 
Don  Ramon  has  been  made  the  theme  of  an  immense 
amount  of  abuse  in  the  best  style  of  Spanish-American 
polemic  or  of  renaissance  literary  blackguardism.  All 
that  may  be  left  standing  on  its  own  basis.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  he  was  connected  with  land 
company  speculations  in  Sonora,  was  associated  with 
American  capitalists,  and  was  not  in  good  health.  As 
an  "  Americanised  Mexican  "  he  was  pecuHarly  repug- 
nant to  the  patriotic  sentiment  of  the  north  of  Mexico 
and  not  a  persona  grata  in  the  south.  If  the  choice 
was  due  to  the  influence  of  "  foreign  plutocrats  "  and  of 
"  Wall  Street  "  it  afforded  a  wondrous  example  of  the 
extent  to  which  business  men  can  be  besotted  by  their 
reliance  on  the  "  power  of  money." 

There  was  a  peculiar  reason  why  the  creation  and 
nomination  of  a  Vice-President  should  be  carried  out 
with  great  tact  in  the  choice  of  the  person.  The 
measure  was  a  most  intelligible  warning  that  steps 
were  being  taken  to  perpetuate  the  "  system  of  Diaz." 
The  view  taken  of  it  is  quite  lucidly  explained  by  Don 

1  It  was  only  the  other  day  that  a  President  of  the  Argentine  Republic, 
finding  his  Congress  inclined  to  be  sulky  and  to  go  on  strike,  arrested  a 
quorum,  marched  them  to  the  House  in  charge  of  the  police,  and  stood  over 
them  till  they  did  as  they  were  told.  The  same  sort  of  thing  might  happen  in 
any  part  of  Spanish  or  Portuguese  America,  except  in  Chile,  where  the  power 
is  in  the  hands  of  a  species  of  oligarchy  of  landowners. 


ANARCHY  WELLS  UP  293 

Francisco  Madero  in  his  little  treatise  "  La  Sucesion 
Presidencial  en  1910."  Senor  Madero  is  a  person  who 
will  play  a  considerable  part  in  the  last  stage  of  the 
life  of  President  Diaz,  and  it  is  well  to  know  who  he 
was  before  we  listen  to  what  he  said. 

The  Madero  family  was  of  Spanish  origin  and,  as  it 
seems,  of  rather  recent  settlement  in  Mexico.  It 
possessed  much  land  in  Coahuila,  the  border  State 
which  lies  next  to  Chihuahua  to  the  east ;  and  it  was 
very  wealthy.  Francisco,  who  was  still  very  young 
when  he  came  forward  in  Mexican  politics  during  the 
seventh  term  of  President  Diaz,  had  been  educated 
partly  in  the  United  States  and  partly  in  Europe.  In 
the  course  of  his  travels  he  is  said  by  those  who  profess 
to  know  and  to  admire  him  to  have  adopted  some  of 
those  opinions  which  more  sober-minded  people  call 
fads.  He  was  a  vegetarian  and  a  spiritualist.^  It  is 
obviously  not  quite  safe  to  accept  the  testimony  of  a 
man  of  credulous  turn.  Yet  Seiior  Madero  may  be 
trusted  when  he  says  that  the  creation  of  a  Vice- 
President  and  the  choice  of  Senor  Corral  mark  the 
starting-point  of  a  definite  movement  of  opposition. 
There  were,  he  says,  Mexicans  who  thought  that  a 
time  had  come  for  a  change  in  the  "  spheres  of  power." 
But  up  to  1904  they  were  prepared  to  wait  till  age  and 
fatigue  or  death  should  remove  Don  Porfirio.  When 
they  saw  that  steps  were  being  taken  to  perpetuate 

^  If  we  can  trust  some  of  those  who  praised  him,  he  would  seem  to  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  consulting  the  crystal,  or  the  cards,  or  some  other  form 
of  divination.  It  is  said  that  when  he  had  the  now  notorious  Zapata  in  his 
power,  and  might  have  shot  him  according  to  all  Mexican  precedent,  he  let 
him  go.  The  reason  given  is  not  that  he  thought  such  an  act  brutal,  or  was 
reluctant  to  execute  without  form  of  law.  It  is  that  he  had  been  magically 
"  told  "  that  his  own  death  would  follow  Zapata's  within  twenty-four  hours. 
This  Is  the  sort  of  story  which  would  be  told  of  such  a  man,  and  I  would  be 
sorry  indeed  to  vouch  for  the  truth  of  the  tale.  But  the  stories  told  of  a 
man  are  in  their  way  evidence.  Nobody  would  have  invented  or  believed 
such  gossip  (If  mere  gossip  It  was)  of  Santa  Ana,  or  Juarez,  or  Diaz. 


294  I^IAZ 

the  possession  of  office  by  those  about  him,  they  felt 
that  they  must  act,  which  means  that  they  must 
conspire.  They  might  have  had  patience  if  they  had 
known  that  the  disappearance  from  the  scene  of 
President  Diaz  would  leave  the  field  clear,  but  if  it 
were  only  to  mean  that  another  and  perhaps  heavier 
hand  were  to  control  the  same  machine  they  must 
resist.  Nothing  could  well  be  more  likely,  and  the 
course  of  events  during  the  next  six  years  would  be 
enough  to  prove  that  many  felt  in  this  way  even  if  we 
had  not  the  direct  testimony  of  a  witness.  Even  if 
Sefior  Madero  tells  us  only  what  he  thought,  then,  in 
view  of  the  part  he  took,  his  statement  has  a  sub- 
stantial value. 

On  the  surface  all  looked  well  to  those  who  saw  the 
Republic  from  abroad,  or  if  they  came  to  it  came  only 
as  visitors  to  look  at  the  improvements  and  report 
astonishing  progress.  Between  1904  and  1906  there 
appeared  quite  a  crop  of  books  full  of  the  most 
hopeful  descriptions  and  predictions.  It  came  to  be 
a  commonplace  that  the  evil  times  were  over  for 
Mexico.  In  1907  Mr.  EHhu  Root  visited  the  capital, 
and  many  festivities  were  held  and  fine  speeches  were 
made.  The  eloquent  American  praised  President 
Diaz  as  the  greatest  of  living  statesmen.  Mr.  Root 
struck  a  note  which  was  echoed  far  and  wide.  At  the 
end  of  a  book  published  in  New  York  in  19 10  by  Don 
Jose  Godoy,  the  author  publishes  a  long  collection 
of  what  really  sound  like  testimonials  to  the  efficacy 
of  some  invention  or  patent  medicine.  They  are 
examples  of  all  the  laudatory  things  said  of  President 
Diaz.  Seiior  Godoy's  book  was  in  fact  an  electioneer- 
ing puff,  and  one  feels  in  regard  to  many  of  the  other 
books   that   they  represent  what   business   interests 


ANARCHY  WELLS  UP  295 

would  wish  investors  to  think  of  Mexico  and  its 
Government,  and  very  little  else.  When  in  1909 
President  Diaz  met  Mr.  Taft  at  Paso  del  Norte  the 
toasts  and  the  ceremonies  were  those  which  we  are 
accustomed  to  hear  of  when  Sovereigns  hold  an 
interview.  In  short,  there  was  no  failure  in  the  flow 
of  official  assurances  that  all  was  well  with  Mexico 
within  and  without. 

While  persons  whose  first  purpose  was  neither  to 
see  nor  to  tell  the  whole  truth  were  saying  smooth 
things  the  unrest  of  Mexico  was  growing  more  acute. 
It  is  a  significant  fact  that  just  when  the  "  coffles  "  of 
enslaved  Yaquis  were  beginning  to  defile  across 
Mexico  in  shameless  publicity — that  is  to  say,  from 
1904  onwards — the  Socialists  grew  very  restive.  It 
is  not  a  whit  less  significant  that  just  before  Mr.  Elihu 
Root  came  in  1907  there  had  been  a  very  long  and 
very  savage  anti-American  agitation  in  Mexico.  It 
was  said  in  a  picturesque  way  that  an  American 
"  Sicilian  Vespers  "  was  averted  with  great  difficulty. 
When  Mr.  Taft  met  his  brother  President  at  Paso  in 
1909,  one  of  the  subjects  of  their  unreported  conversa- 
tion must  have  been  the  recent  flight  of  exiles  from 
Mexico  and  the  trouble  they  gave  Governments. 
Everybody  who  cared  to  learn  the  facts  knew  that 
only  the  vigilance  of  Washington  prevented  the 
territory  of  the  United  States  from  being  used  as  a 
basis  of  operations  for  a  rebellion  in  Mexico  ;  and  even 
this  guarantee  for  peace  was  not  at  all  times  sufficient 
It  is  all  but  impossible  to  guard  every  part  of  a  frontier 
seventeen  hundred  miles  long  of  which  much  is  not, 
or  is  barely,  inhabited.  In  1908  there  was  an  out- 
break in  Coahuila  which  had  notoriously  been 
prepared  in  the  States. 


296  DIAZ 

There  is  always  an  extreme  difficulty  in  getting  at 
the  whole  truth  of  events  which  have  happened  very 
recently ;  and  yet  we  may  venture  to  assume  that 
not  much  is  to  be  learnt  about  the  insurrection  which 
finally  drove  President  Diaz  to  Europe  beyond  what 
appears  on  the  surface.  The  reasons  given  in  the 
last  chapter  why  the  peace  he  had  kept  for  a  time 
unprecedented  in  Mexican  history  should  at  last  be 
broken  are  also  sufficient  to  account  for  what  in  that 
country  and  in  the  circumstances  was  a  natural  event. 
If  anything  needs  to  be  added,  it  is  that  as  Diaz 
came  near  his  eightieth  year  he  could  no  longer  work 
as  he  once  did.  Don  Francisco  Madero  asserts  that 
this  was  the  case.  It  follows  that  he  fell  into  the 
hands  of  those  about  him.  They  intercepted  the 
truth,  so  Don  Francisco  asserts,  and  it  is  consistent 
with  probability.  It  is  the  fatal  defect  of  all  purely 
personal  government  that  it  grows  old  with  the  ruler 
before  it  dies  with  him.  In  a  monarchical  country 
what  descends  to  the  grave  with  an  Elizabeth  or  a 
Frederick  the  Great  is  a  personal  method  of  using  an 
institution.  But  what  of  necessity  went  into  exile 
with  the  President  of  Mexico  was  all  government. 

Don  Porfirio  could  quote  this  fact  in  answer  to  the 
question  why  he  decided  to  re-elect  himself  once 
more  in  1910.  He  had  had  many  warnings  from  1904 
onwards  that  by  persisting  in  office  he  would  provoke 
trouble.  Open  disorder,  Socialist  or  Liberal,  had  been 
repressed  with  apparent  success.  The  "  acordada  " 
(secret  police)  kept  watch.  Those  who  threatened  to 
become  dangerous  were  arrested  and  sent  to  the 
castle  of  San  Juan  de  UUoa,  or  driven  to  escape  over 
the  American  border.  There  the  United  States  kept 
an  eye  on  them,  and,  instigated,  so  we  are  assured,  by 


ANARCHY  WELLS  UP  297 

Wall  Street,  repressed  their  plots.  But  though  a 
smooth  surface  was  preserved  by  these  vigorous 
measures,  there  were  signs  which  could  not  be  ignored 
that  mere  police  vigour  would  not  be  enough.  The 
Press  of  Mexico  is  free  only  by  the  letter  of  the 
Constitution,  and  as  the  electors  are  free.  Yet  even 
the  Press  began  to  say  strong  things  about  the 
"  caciquismo "  of  the  President's  rule.  The  great 
re-election  theme  began  to  be  discussed.  It  was  a 
sign  of  the  times  that  a  very  curious  compromise 
found  favour  with  some.  They  were  ready  to  consent 
that  the  President  should  be  chosen  again  in  the  old 
way — in  other  words,  that  the  voters  should  do  as 
they  were  bid  in  so  far  as  he  was  personally  concerned. 
But  they  had  a  device  for  introducing  true  liberty  of 
election.  It  was  that  the  electors  should  be  absolutely 
free  to  vote  for  or  against  the  Vice-President,  Don 
Ramon  Corral.  The  compromise  was  infantile.  Don 
Ramon  had  been  selected  as  President's  understudy 
precisely  because  he  was  expected  to  continue  the 
so-called  Diaz  system  with  the  same  men  as  colleagues 
or  agents.  If  he  were  to  be  defeated  at  the  polls — 
and  on  the  supposition  that  the  election  was  to  be  free 
he  most  assuredly  would  be — the  system  would  be 
defeated  too.  Don  Porfirio  would  be  reduced  to  a 
figurehead.  It  was  not  a  position  he  could  be  expected 
to  accept ;  nor  ought  he  to  have  accepted  it.  Mexico 
is  not  a  country  which  can  be  governed  by  a  figure- 
head. The  so-called  compromise  broke  down  at  once 
when  tested. 

The  fact  that  everything  was  at  stake  became  more 
apparent  in  1909  when  the  Central  Democratic  Club 
produced  a  scheme  of  reform.  It  contained  a  great 
many  generalities,  and  not  a  few  sentiments,  but  there 


298  DIAZ 

was  one  proposal  in  it  which  was  undeniably  sub- 
stantial. This  was  that  the  office  of  Jefe  Politico 
should  be  abolished,  and  that  the  Jefes  should  be 
replaced  by  an  elected  board  or  committee.  Of 
course  this  change  would  have  taken  away  the  whole 
foundation  not  only  of  the  "  Diaz  system  "  but  of  the 
edifice  of  government  in  Mexico.  The  novelty  was  to 
be  accompanied  by  electoral  reform  at  large — free 
election  for  governors  and  President.  Anyone  who 
knew  what  government  meant  in  Mexico  could  see  at 
once  that  the  practical  result  of  such  a  constitutional 
device  must  infallibly  be  a  fight  in  the  literal  sense  of 
the  word  in  every  district  of  every  State  in  the 
Republic. 

What  Porfirio  Diaz  may  have  thought  or  decided 
in  foro  interno  is  mere  idle  speculation.  We  know 
with  sufficient  accuracy  what  he  did.  When  the  time 
for  the  new  election  of  1910  drew  near  he  said  he 
would  not  stand  again,  and  he  broke  his  promise. 
That  is  the  substantial  fact.  Did  he  break  his  word 
from  mere  longing  to  retain  office,  and  was  his 
promise  a  sheer  hypocrisy  ?  Or  did  he  decide  to 
continue  in  office  simply  because  he  must  ?  There 
are  good  reasons  for  thinking  that  the  last  is  the  true 
explanation.  The  reader  is  asked  to  excuse  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  statement  that  there  was  but  one  choice  for 
Mexico — namely,  between  a  vigorous  personal  govern- 
ment by  some  one  man,  working  with  a  trusty  staff  of 
agents,  and  anarchy.  Since  this  was  the  fact,  as  the 
events  of  the  last  five  years  have  amply  demon- 
strated, was  Diaz  to  blame  if  he  refused  to  retire  before 
he  could  leave  the  country  in  strong  hands  ?  It  is  at 
least  a  tenable  proposition  that  he  would  not  have 
been  justified.     Even  if  he  saw  no  chance  of  finding  a 


ANARCHY  WELLS   UP  299 

competent  successor,  he  was  to  be  excused  for  endea- 
vouring to  put  off  the  evil  day  so  long  as  he  could. 

In  1909,  before  the  election  was  formally  open,  a 
proof  was  given  of  the  resolution  of  some  Mexicans  to 
break  down  the  "  system."  The  opponents  of  Don 
Ramon  Corral  decided  to  oppose  his  re-election — they 
did  not  so  far  openly  oppose  the  President — and  they 
chose  General  Reyes  as  their  candidate.  General 
Reyes  had  been  for  some  years  Governor  of  the  State 
of  Nuevo  Leon.  He  was  therefore  a  part  of  the 
"  system."  But  he  had  been  a  popular  governor  and 
had  local  influence.  From  all  that  can  be  seen  of  him 
from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  the  General  appears  to 
have  been  a  moderate  man  of  a  kindly  disposition,  but 
of  not  much  force  of  character.  He  did  not,  so  it 
seems,  exactly  put  himself  forward  as  an  opponent  of 
Don  Ramon,  but  his  friends,  or  the  party  which 
thought  he  would  be  useful  to  them,  did  it  for  him. 
Of  course  this  was  opposition,  and,  if  it  was  allowed, 
would  set  a  bad  example.  Measures  were  taken  to 
suppress  the  agitation,  and  the  Reyista  party  (a 
Mexican  party  nearly  always  names  itself  after  a 
person,  rarely  after  a  principle)  retaliated  by  riotous 
demonstrations.  The  demonstrations  were  put  down 
and  General  Reyes  was  sent  on  a  mission  to  inquire 
into  the  military  systems  of  Europe.  It  was  not  harsh 
treatment,  but  Reyes  had  many  friends  in  the  army. 
He  went,  and  before  leaving  America  he  gave  an 
interview  to  newspaper  reporters  in  New  York  which 
leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  as  a  profession  of  faith  in 
the  virtues  of  Don  Porfirio  and  the  necessity  of 
retaining  him  as  President. 

The  disappearance  for  the  time  being  of  General 
Reyes  left  the  field  free  for  Don  Francisco  Madero. 


300  DIAZ 

One  cannot  but  have  a  certain  compunction  to  speak 
unkindly  of  a  man  who  came  to  such  a  shocking  fate. 
And  yet  if  he  had  not  been  butchered  with  a  barbarity 
exceptional  even  for  Mexico,  it  would  be  hard  to  keep 
one's  hands  off  Francisco  Madero.  Enthusiasts  have 
been  found  to  call  him  "  a  star  "  and  what  not  equally 
laudatory.  Yet,  to  anyone  who  will  take  the  trouble 
to  read  his  book  "  The  Presidential  Election  "  and  to 
learn  his  actions,  he  appears  to  have  been  neither 
more  nor  less  than  an  example  of  the  "  ligereza  " — 
the  feather-headedness  of  a  certain  stamp  of  Spaniard. 
He  was  the  pitiable  victim  of  his  own  errors,  and  so 
we  may  prefer  to  say  all  the  good  we  can  of  him.  It 
is  honourable  to  him  that  his  little  book  is  free  from 
the  foul  scolding  so  common  in  the  political  journalism 
of  his  and  kindred  countries.  But  a  man  needs  more 
than  some  sense  of  decency  before  he  is  justified  in 
letting  loose  a  civil  war.  He  must  have  ideas  and  a 
cause  to  fight  for.  Now  it  is  impossible  to  make  out 
from  Senor  Madero's  statement  of  his  case  that  he  took 
up  arms  for  anything  except  the  sacred  principle  that 
the  places  of  dignity  and  emolument  ought  to  go  round 
in  a  truly  democratic  country.  There  is  not  a  trace  of 
any  attempt  on  his  part  to  face  the  dominant  fact 
that  Mexico  is  not  a  democratic  country  nor  one  in 
which  the  choice  of  rulers,  upper  and  under,  can  be 
left  to  the  free  and  independent  electors.  The  theory 
of  the  orthodox  democratic  doctors,  says  Madero,  is 
so  and  so,  and  we  must  apply  it  regardless  of  facts, 
conditions,  and  experience.  The  man  was,  in  short, 
a  pedant.  It  is  characteristic  of  him  and  his  unhappy 
class  that,  while  he  speaks  with  a  humanity  which 
must  be  credited  to  his  honour  of  the  cruel  treatment 
of  the  Yaquis  and  other  Indians,  he  gives  no  sign  of 


ANARCHY  WELLS   UP  301 

having  thought  out  any  definite  plan  for  righting 
their  wrongs,  nor  to  have  reflected  on  the  principles 
which  ought  to  guide  a  Government  in  dealing  with 
such  a  population.  He  has  nothing  to  offer  but 
sentiments  and  the  promise  that,  if  only  there  is  a 
change  of  persons  in  the  Presidency  and  the  governor- 
ships of  the  States,  all  will  be  well  in  Mexico.  It  is 
said  that  he  was  kind  to  his  own  Indians,  but  it  is  not 
said  that  the  truck  system,  which  by  its  very  nature 
worked  for  evil,  was  rejected  on  the  Madero  estates. 
There  is  something  suspicious  in  his  candid-looking 
confession  that  his  family  had  no  private  reason  for 
disHking  the  "  system  "  of  President  Diaz.  Whenever 
the  Maderos  had  occasion  to  appeal  to  the  courts  or 
the  Administration  at  the  capital  their  interests  had 
always  been  treated  with  equity.  What  this  may 
very  well  mean  when  translated  into  the  language  of 
mere  truth  is  most  probably  nothing  but  just  this — 
that  the  courts  and  the  Administration  were  always 
ready  to  meet  the  views  of  an  influential  family.  The 
Maderos  were  quite  as  well  disposed  as  any  other 
wealthy  connection  to  make  use  of  the  much-abused 
system  for  their  own  ends.  We  need  not  be  surprised 
to  hear  that  when  Don  Francisco  did  become  President 
his  "  good  nature  "  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
check  the  rapacity  of  his  relatives.  There  is  a  kind  of 
good  nature,  as  well  as  of  good  intention,  which  paves 
the  road  to  hell.^ 


^  I  am  not  quoting  Dr.  Johnson,  but  a  Portuguese  proverb  which  says 
that  the  road  to  etc.,  etc. — a  far  wiser  saying  than  the  Doctor's  famous 
explosion.  It  is  not  perhaps  of  much  use  to  refer  the  reader  to  books  which 
he  can  only  obtain  by  writing  for  them  to  Mexico  or  to  Havannah,  but  if  he 
by  accident  comes  across  a  book  by  the  name  of  "  La  Parra,  la  Perra,  y 
la  Porra  "  ("  The  Wild  Vine,  the  Bitch,  and  the  Cudgel  "),  he  will  see  a  fine 
example  of  the  mere  froth  of  words  which  surrounded  the  whole  Madero 
adventure.     La  Parra  was  the  name  of  Madero's  hacienda. 


302  DIAZ 

If  there  had  not  been  general  discontent  in  Mexico 
with  more  than  the  chnging  to  office  of  Don  Porfirio 
and  his  connection,  such  a  man  would  have  had  no 
opportunity  to  play  a  part.  And  if  he  had  not  had 
command  of  a  long  purse  he  would  probably  not  have 
cut  much  of  a  figure  even  as  it  was.  But,  the  two 
going  together,  he  was  the  man  who  hastened  the  day 
when  Mexico  was  to  return  to  anarchy. 

Before  the  movement  in  favour  of  electing  General 
Reyes  had  been  quashed,  and  the  General  had  sailed 
on  his  mission  to  inquire  into  the  military  systems  of 
Europe,  Madero  was  simply  a  "  joven  distinguido  " 
(a  youth  belonging  to  an  opulent  family).  But  he 
now  came  forward  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency 
itself.  It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  spend .  words  in 
saying  what  this  implied  in  Mexico.  What  it  meant 
for  Don  Francisco  was  that  he  was  arrested  shortly 
before  the  election  was  due,  in  July  1910.  The  charge 
was  first  that  he  had  helped  to  protect  one  Estrada, 
a  partisan  of  General  Reyes,  from  arrest  ;  then  it 
was  altered  into  a  charge  of  insulting  the  nation. 
Finally  he  was  accused  of  insulting  the  President. 
This  at  least  was  the  account  given  by  his  friends. 
The  formula  preferred  was  of  no  consequence,  and 
any  other  pretext  would  have  served  for  a  measure 
which  had  no  end  but  to  silence  a  politician  who 
threatened  to  give  trouble.  The  enemies  of  President 
Diaz  have  been  put  to  it  to  explain  why  Madero 
was  not  shot.  They  have  cleared  up  the  mystery  by 
describing  a  pathetic  scene  in  which  La  Sefiora  Diaz 
implored  and  persuaded  her  ferocious  husband  not  to 
add  another  to  the  already  long-drawn-out  list  of  his 
murders.  This  is  precisely  what  would  be  said  by 
anyone  with  a  moderate  inventive  faculty.     Madero 


ANARCHY  WELLS   UP  303 

was  not  shot,  but  preserved  to  be  butchered  by  one 
or  several  of  the  wild  beasts  he  had  helped  to  let  loose 
on  his  country.  He  was  only  kept  in  jail  and  out  of  the 
way  of  doing  or  suffering  harm  till  the  election  was  over. 

It  being  clear  that  no  real  election  would  be 
tolerated,  and  as  the  Government  disposed  of  an 
adequate  armed  force.  President  and  Vice-President 
were  declared  duly  returned  by  the  unanimous  voice 
of  the  people.  In  September  President  Diaz  presided 
over  the  last  peaceful  ceremony  he  was  to  witness  in 
Mexico,  the  celebration  of  the  independence  of  the 
country,  which  has  been  made  to  date  from  the  rising 
headed  by  Hidalgo.  We  have  seen  what  that 
emotional  priest  had  really  done.  A  spectator  who 
knew  the  facts  of  the  state  of  the  country  might  well 
have  asked  himself  whether  the  revival  of  that 
memory  was  not  ominous.  His  doubts  would  have 
been  justified,  for  the  rule  of  President  Diaz  had  not 
then  a  year  to  live. 

The  mere  events  of  his  fall  need  not  be  recorded 
here.  That  Madero  took  up  arms  in  Chihuahua  in 
January  and  that  by  May  the  "  Diaz  system  "  had 
collapsed  are,  with  one  other  about  to  be  named,  the 
essential  facts.  There  were  no  encounters  deserving 
the  name  of  battle.  No  faculty  and  no  energy  were 
displayed,  either  in  attack  or  defence.  The  regime 
which  had  given  Mexico  some  thirty  years  of  growing 
material  prosperity  and  the  appearance  of  order  fell 
to  pieces,  and  this  happened  (here  we  come  to  the 
third  fact  which  is  to  be  kept  in  mind)  because  the  man 
on  whom  all  depended  had  himself  broken  down  under 
the  pressure  of  age.  Don  Porfirio  bore  up  gallantly, 
keeping  himself  upright  by  sheer  strength  of  will, 
speaking  of  hi&  intention  to  take  command  of  the 


304  DIAZ 

forces  in  the  field,  if  the  rising  became  really  dangerous, 
till  his  body  failed  him.  On  May  i  he  was  still 
insisting  on  a  compromise  by  which  he  and  Madero 
were  both  to  retire,  and  a  desperate  bid  for  popularity 
was  made  by  a  change  of  Ministry.  But  the  long 
fight  had  ended  in  defeat.  Anarchy  was  bubbling 
up  on  all  hands.  The  United  States  were  threatening 
intervention.  The  insurgents  could  safely  refuse  to 
listen  to  any  terms  and  could  insist  that  the  uncon- 
ditional retirement  of  the  President  must  be  the 
preliminary  to  every  other  measure.  Porfirio  Diaz 
himself  was  prostrate,  and  the  acts  of  his  Government 
were  as  the  blows  of  the  exhausted  athlete  which  have 
lost  their  force.  He  was  confined  to  bed  and  his 
strong  body  was  showing  the  first  signs  of  senile  decay. 
He  could  see  no  one  outside  of  his  own  family  save 
Seiior  Limantour,  who  alone  of  his  old  ministers 
remained  with  him.  On  May  18  his  resignation  was 
announced  to  the  Congress  in  words  which  cannot 
have  been  his,  and  he  prepared  for  exile.  There  were 
still  among  the  soldiers,  whose  interests  he  had  always 
considered,  loyal  men  enough  to  see  to  it  that  the  old 
President  should  not  be  subject  to  insult  or  outrage 
while  he  was  leaving  the  country.  He,  his  family,  and 
those  of  his  associates  who  had  no  choice  but  to  go  into 
exile  with  him  were  protected  on  the  way  to  Veracruz, 
where  they  took  ship  for  New  York.  General  Huerta, 
who  was  to  succeed  him,  to  avenge  him  vilely  on 
Madero,  and  in  the  end  to  join  him  in  exile,  saw  to  the 
safety  of  the  party.  It  was  assailed  on  the  way  to 
the  seaport,  and  the  escort  had  to  fight  it  through. 
On  the  pier  Diaz  listened,  hat  in  hand,  a  pathetic 
figure,  to  the  last  words  of  farewell  spoken  to  him  on 
his  native  soil. 


ANARCHY  WELLS  UP  305 

From  New  York  he  sailed  to  Europe,  and  from  that 
time  forward  his  life  passed  into  the  privacy  of  his 
family,  where  we  have  no  right  to  follow  him.  After 
spending  some  time  in  the  south  of  Europe,  he  went  to 
Paris  in  May,  19 14.  He  died  there  on  July  2,  191 5, 
amid  the  roar  of  a  storm  which  left  the  world  with  but 
little  attention  to  give  to  a  fallen  President  of  Mexico. 

This  book  has  been  written  to  no  purpose  if  it  is 
necessary  to  spend  words  in  summing  up  the  career 
and  the  character  of  Porfirio  Diaz.  If  a  final  verdict 
is  to  be  given  it  must  be  something  like  this.  He 
showed  the  world  what  was  the  utmost  that  his  country 
was  capable  of  doing  in  order  to  qualify  itself  to 
take  its  place  among  civilised  and  progressive  States. 
All  it  has  been  able  to  do  has  been  to  produce  a 
resolute,  heavy-handed  man  who  could  keep  an 
incurable  anarchy  within  bounds  for  an  unprecedented 
period  of  years.  That  man  had  no  other  nor  higher 
aim  than  to  develop  resources,  build  public  works, 
enable  foreign  capital  to  promote  industry  and  make 
profits  for  itself.  All  this  he  did,  and  an  admiring 
world  took  him  for  a  great  reformer  whose  work  would 
last.  But,  much  as  it  seemed  to  be,  it  was  naught 
if  we  look  beyond  the  outward  and  visible  things 
which  money  and  labour  can  produce  between  them, 
and  try  to  pierce  into  those  inward  and  spiritual 
things  which  alone  make  the  health  of  a  nation,  and 
without  which  all  the  triumphs  of  industry  are  but 
pearls  on  the  swine's  snout.  He  rose  to  rule  a 
country  which  could  not  possess  real  unity  save  if  it 
had  been  endowed  with  a  strong  monarchy  and  a 
capable  aristocracy.  Monarchy  was  impossible,  and 
there  were  not  the  most  beggarly  elements  of  an 
aristocracy.     Police  order  for  a  time  he  could  give,  and 


3o6  DIAZ 

nothing  more.  Under  cover  of  that  police  order  the 
outer  world  put  its  hand  on  Mexico  and  brought  the 
country  appreciably  nearer  the  day  when  the  huge  and 
growing  mass  of  power  on  its  northern  border  will 
spread  over  it  —  by  what  movements  we  do  not 
know,  but  as  surely  as  water  flows  from  a  higher 
to  a  lower  level.  At  no  period  in  man's  history 
has  a  chronic,  sanguinary,  brainless  anarchy  been 
allowed  to  live  for  very  long  beside  order  and  political 
capacity  and  thought.  He  could  not  even  add 
strength  to  the  mere  mechanical  unity  of  his  country, 
for  he  lived  to  see  the  northern  provinces  in  process  of 
being  torn  away  by  a  mere  brigand,  while  his  own 
nephew  was  erecting  an  independent  power  in  his 
native  Oaxaca.  He  failed,  perhaps  because  he  was 
not  great  man  enough,  but  more  surely  because  he  had 
not  to  his  hand  the  elements  with  which  more  could  be 
done.     Un  homme  rCest  qu'un  homme. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bancroft,  H.  H.  "  History  of  the  Pacific  States  of  North 
America."     34  vols.     San  Francisco.     1882 — 1890. 

The  "  History  of  Mexico,"  15 17 — 1857,  forms  vols.  iv. 
to  ix.  of  the  whole  work.     The  Histories  of  the  North 
Mexican  States — Texas,  Arizona  and  New  Mexico — are 
in  vols.  X.,  xi.,  and  xii.     Full,  impartial,  well  informed, 
with   many   quotations    from    documents,    and    copious 
references  to  authorities. 
"  Datos    Biograficos    del    [Biographic    Data    of]    General 
Porfirio  Diaz."     Published  in  the  office  of  the  Patria  news- 
paper.    Mexico.     1884.     Official  and  partisan,  but  contains 
useful  documents. 

Escudero,  Ignacio  M.  "  Apuntes  Histdricos  de  la  Carrera 
Militar  del  [Historical  Notes  of  the  Military  Career  of]  Senor 
General  Porfirio  Diaz."  Mexico.  1889.  Partisan,  but  full 
of  details. 

Zayas  Enriquez,  Rafael  de,  "  Porfirio  Diaz,  La  Evolucion 
de  su  Vida  "  [The  Evolution  of  his  Life].  New  York.  1908. 
A  critical  and  not  always  friendly  study  by  a  well-informed 
writer. 

Rodriguez,  Ricardo.  "  Historia  Autentica  de  la  Adminis- 
tracion  del  [Authentic  History  of  the  Administration  of] 
Senor  General  Porfirio  Diaz."  Mexico.  1904.  A  collection 
of  the  President's  addresses  to  Congress. 

Hernandez,  Fortunato.  "  Un  Pueblo,  un  Siglo,  y  un 
Hombre  "  [A  People,  an  Epoch,  and  a  Man].  Mexico.  1909. 
An  answer  to  Zayas  Enriquez — inspired  by  the  President. 

Garcia,  Genero.  "  Porfirio  Diaz,  sus  Padres,  Ninez, 
Juventud "  [his  Family,  Childhood,  and  Youth].  Mexico. 
1906.  Useful  details  of  early  years  (largely  supplied  by 
Porfirio  Diaz). 

X  2 


3o8  DIAZ 

Fornaro^  Carlo  de,  "  Diaz,  Czar  of  Mexico."  No  place  of 
publication  is  given,  but  probably  New  York.  1909.  An 
invective. 

Godoy,  Josg  F.  "  Porfirio  Diaz,  President  of  Mexico." 
New  York.     191  o.     The  work  of  an  official  and  a  partisan. 

Madero,  Francisco  J.  "  La  Sucesion  Presidencial  "  [The 
Succession  to  the  Presidency].  Mexico.  191 1.  A  party 
pamphlet,  but  a  useful  statement  of  the  views  of  opponents  of 
the  re-election  of  Porfirio  Diaz  in  1910. 

TweedUf  Mrs.  "  Mexico  as  I  saw  It."  London.  1 901. 
"  Diaz."     London.     1906. 

Turner,  J.  K.  "  Barbarous  Mexico."  London.  191 1.  A 
book  inspired  by  passionate  indignation,  but  well  informed 
and  the  work  of  an  eye-witness  whose  spirit  was  honourable. 

NioXy  G.  "  Expedition  au  Mexique."  Paris.  1874.  A 
good  narrative  of  the  French  intervention  by  an  eye-witness, 
\and  based  on  official  papers. 


INDEX 


AcuLTziNGO,  Pass  of,  forced  by 
French,  60 

Alatorre,  General,  supports  Lerdists 
defeated  by  Diaz  at  Tecoac,  159 — 
160 

Alcabalas,  Mexican  excise,  245  etseq. 

Alvarez,  General,  President,  43  ; 
aids  Diaz  in  Guerrero,  96 

Amelie  Charlotte,  wife  of  Maxi- 
mihan,  comes  to  Mexico,  74 

Apaches,  suppressed,  268 — 269 

Appomatox,  capitulation  of  Con- 
federates at,  88 

Argentine  Republic,  cause  of  pro- 
sperity of,  124 

Bancroft,  H.  H.,  quoted,  53 
*'  Bandera,"  Yaqui  chief,  271 
Bazaine,  General,   afterwards  Mar- 
shal,   defeats    Mexicans    in    San 
Lorenzo,      72 ;      Commander-in- 
Chief,   73  ;    prepares   to   occupy 
Oaxaca,     80,     81  ;      takes,     85  ; 
anger  with  Diaz,  86 — 87  ;  corre- 
spondence with  Diaz,    105,    107  ; 
evacuates  Mexico,  108 
Benitez,  Justo,  secretary  to  Diaz, 
79  ;     supposed    to   inspire   Diaz, 
171  ;  why  rejected    as    successor 
to  Diaz,  215 
Blanco,      Guzman,      President     of 
Colombia,     and     the     "  rotative 
compromise,"  214 
Brazo  Militar,  what  meant,  27 
Brincourt,  French  General,  opposed 
to  Diaz,  81 

Cacique,  what  meant,  29 ;  of 
Poyais,  see  Macgregor,  Gregor. 

Candelaria,  La,  Diaz's  second  ranch, 
149 

Carbonera,  La,  action  at,  102 

Cerro  Borrego,  defeat  of  Mexicans 
at,  62 


Cerro  de  la  Bufa,  action  at,  147 

Chalchicomula,  San  Andres  de,  59  ; 
explosion  at,  60 

Church  in  Mexico,  reasons  for 
opposition  to  Diaz,  174  et  seq. 

Cobos,  General,  Conservative  leader, 
wins  battle  of  Ixcapa,  44 ; 
defeated  at  Jalapa,  45  ;  defeats 
Diaz,  48 — 49  ;  is  defeated,  ibid. 

Colonies,  British  and  Spanish  com- 
pared, 7,  9        . 

Comonfort,  President,  his  erratic 
policy  and  exile,  43 

Consumos,  Mexican  octroi,  249 

Corona,  Ramon,  General,  joins 
Diaz,  114 

Corral,  Ramon,  elected  Vice-Presi- 
dent, 292  ;  re-elected,  296  ;  oppo- 
sition to,  297,  299 

Crawford,  Captain,  U.S.  Army, 
killed  in  Chihuahua,  195 

Dang,  M.,  French  Minister,  pro- 
tected by  Diaz,  133 

Debt,  Mexican  public,  228  et  seq. 

Detrie,  Captain,  defeats  Mexicans 
at  Cerro  Borrego,  62 

Diaz,  Felix  (El  Chato),  younger 
brother  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  his 
birth,  3  ;  aids  his  brother,  34 — 
37  ;  reinforces  his  brother,  1 14  ; 
in  arms  with  his  brother,  146 ; 
murder  of,  147 

Diaz,  Jose  de  la  Cruz,  father  of 
President  Diaz,  i,  2,  3 

Diaz,  Jose  de  la  Cruz  Porfirio,  see 
Diaz,  Porfirio. 

Diaz,  Maria  del  Carmen  Rubio 
Romero,  Seiiora  de,  second  wife 
of  President  Diaz,  zi()  et  seq. 

Diaz,  Porfirio,  birth,  i  5  education, 
2,  3  ;  volunteers  in  war  with 
United  States,  4;  enters  seminary, 
ibid.  ;  refuses  to  enter  Church,  5  ; 


3i6 


INDEX 


municates  with  Marcos  Perez  in 
prison,  34 — 37  ;  votes  against 
Dictator  and  becomes  guerrillero, 
39 ;  Sub-Prefect  of  Ixtlan,  40, 
42  ;  raises  company  of  National 
Guard,  44  ;  wounded  at  Ixcapa, 
ibid.  ;  Governor  of  Tehuantepec, 
45,  48  ;  defeated  at  Mitla,  48  ; 
hides  in  Ixtlan,  49  ;  helps  to  retake 
Oaxaca,  ibid.  ;  colonel  in  regular 
army  and  deputy  for  Ocotlan,  50  ; 
services  in  field,  ibid.^  51,  52  ; 
takes  part  in  defence  of  Puebla, 
61  ;  quoted,  62  ;  promoted 
General  of  brigade,  63  ;  Governor 
of  Veracruz,  ibid.  ;  his  poHcy  for 
the  defence  of  Puebla,  65  ;  de- 
fends San  Marcos  and  San 
Agustin  in,  69  ;  quoted,  70,  71  ; 
becomes  prisoner  of  war,  72  ; 
escapes,  73  ;  appointed  to  com- 
mand Army  of  East,  76 ;  his 
march  to  Oaxaca,  yj  ;  assumes 
government  of,  78,  79  ;  operations 
against  Bazaine,  81  ;  ill  sup- 
ported, 82  ;  refuses  to  join  Maxi- 
milian, 84 ;  forced  to  surrender, 
85  ;  threatened  by  Bazaine,  86 — 
87 ;  sent  prisoner  to  Puebla, 
ibid. ;  refuses  to  intervene  on 
behalf  of  Imperialist  prisoners,  90  ; 
escapes  from  Puebla,  91,  92 ; 
forms  new  Army  of  East,  93,  96  ; 
performs  surgical  operation,  95  ; 
defeated  by  Imperialists  but 
gains  ground,  98  ;  his  victory  at 
Nochistlan,  ibid.  ;  and  at  Miahu- 
atlan,  99  ;  his  skilful  operations, 
loi  ;  victory  at  La  Carbonera, 
102 ;  takes  Oaxaca,  103  ;  rigo- 
rous measures  at,  ibid. ;  com- 
pletes recovery  of  South  and 
East,  104 ;  correspondence  with 
Bazaine,  105 — 107  ;  refuses  in- 
vitation of  Maximilian,  ibid. ; 
besieges  and  takes  Puebla,  108  ; 
operations  against  Marquez,  109, 
no;  begins  siege  of  city  of 
Mexico,  112,  113  ;  surrounds  city, 
114;  his  conduct  during  siege, 
115;  estimate  of  his  character 
and    capacity,     116,     121  ;     hit 


separation  from  Juarez,  129  et  stq.; 
protects  French  Minister,  M. 
Dano,  133  ;  his  financial  position, 
134;  retires  to  La  Noria,  ibid.; 
his  first  marriage,  ibid.  ;  reported 
conversation  with  Juarez,  137; 
opposes  Juarez  in  election  of 
1867,  139  et  seq.  ;  heads  revolt 
against  Juarez,  144  et  seq.  ;  has 
to  yield  to  Lerdo  dc  Tejada,  148 
et  seq.  ;  retired  to  La  Candelaria, 
149  ;  heads  rising  against  Lerdo 
de  Tejada,  151  ^r  seq.;  goes  to 
Texas,  153  et  seq.;  invades 
Mexico,  154;  his  difficulties  with 
local  leaders,  155  ;  takes  Mata- 
moros,  156  ;  returns  to  United 
States,  ibid. ;  sails  for  Oaxaca, 
and  his  adventure  on  the  way, 
ibid,  et  seq. ;  takes  command  in 
Oaxaca,  159;  his  victory  at 
Tecoac,  160 ;  occupies  city  of 
Mexico,  162 ;  marches  against 
Iglesias,  165  ;  elected  President, 
166  5  insists  on  keeping  faith 
with  army,  1 67  et  seq.  ;  his  method 
of  government,  170,  172 ;  diffi- 
culties of  his  position,  173  et 
seq. ;  hostility  of  Church,  174 
et  seq.  ;  reform  of  public  services, 
181  ;    simplicity  of  his  life,    182, 

183  ;  relations  with  United  States, 

184  et  seq.  ;  settlement  with,  187 
et  seq.  ;  recognised  by,  188  ; 
difficulties  on  frontier,  188  et 
seq.  ;  approves  action  of  Ter^n 
in  massacre  at  Veracruz,  200 — 
206  ;  First  Administration  ends, 
207 ;  matter  and  style  of  his 
addresses  to  Congress,  209  ;  on 
end  of  his  first  term  takes  Ministry 
of  Public  Works,  217 ;  resigns 
and  takes  Governorship  of 
Oaxaca,  218  ;  second  marriage, 
219  ^/  seq.  ;  visit  to  United  States, 
221  ;  probable  origin  of  his  for- 
tune, 223  ;  his  error  in  regard  to 
financing  of  pubfic  works,  225  ; 
re-elected  President,  235  ;  subse- 
quent re-elections,  236  et  seq. ; 
beginning  of  his  second  term,  241  ; 
choice  of  Minister  of  Finance,  257 ; 
makes  reductions  in  army,  259  ; 


INDEX 


317 


purchases  of  railways,  259 — 260  ; 
charges  of  inhumanity  brought 
against,  267 ;  co-operates  with 
United  States  to  suppress 
Apaches,  269  ;  favours  capitalists 
and  land  companies,  284  et  seq.;  re- 
elected in  1904,  290 — 291  ;  meets 
Mr.  Taft  on  frontier,  295  ;  his 
strength  begins  to  fail,  296  ; 
decides  to  be  re-elected  in  19 10, 
ibid,  and  298  ;  struggles  to 
maintain  his  position,  303  ;  his 
strength  breaks  down,  304 ; 
resigns  and  leaves  country,  ibid. ; 
death  in  Paris,  305 
Dominguez,  Canon,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Oaxaca,  godfather  of 
Porfirio  Diaz,  aids  in  his  educa- 
tion, 4 


EscANDON,     Antonio,     concession- 
naire  of  Veracruz  line,  225 


FoREY,  General,  besieges  Puebla, 
65 — 72  ;  occupies  city  of  Mexico, 
73  ;  superseded  by  Bazaine,  ibid. 

Fornaro,  Carlo  de,  abuse  of  Diaz,  120 

Franco,  Pablo,  Imperial  Prefect  of 
Oaxaca,  executed  by  Diaz,  103 

Fuero  militar  and  cclesiastico, 
what  meant,  27 


Gonzalez,  General,  left  in  com- 
mand by  Diaz  in  North,  156; 
elected  President  in  1880,  216 
et  seq. ;  his  Presidency,  222 
et  seq.  ;  retires,  235 

Gourgaud,  Baron,  his  quotation  of 
Napoleon,  122 

Grant,  General  Ulysses  S.,  visits 
Mexico,  222 

Guardias  Rurales,  reorganised  by 
Diaz,  their  origin  and  functions, 
178  et  seq. 


Hardy,  Lieutenant  R.  W.  H.,  R.N., 

his  account  of  Yaquis,  272 
Hernandez,     Fidencio,     commands 
for  Diaz  in  Oaxaca,  153  «<  seq. 


Hidalgo,    priest,    his     revolt,    22  j 

death,  23 
Huerta,  General,  protects  Diaz,  304 


Iglesias,  Jos6  Maria,  144;  Presi- 
dent of  Supreme  Court,  152; 
conflict  with  Lerdo  de  Tejada, 
ibid,  et  seq.;  his  pretensions,  155 
et  seq.  ;  supported  in  North,  156  ; 
his  opposition  to  Diaz  and 
defeat,  1 62  et  seq.  /  escapes  to 
United  States,  166 

Indiada,  meaning  of  term,  40,  41 

Indians,  Mexican,  causes  of  their 
poverty,  126 — 128  ;  why  pro- 
sperity of  Mexico  did  not  benefit 
them,  282  et  seq. 

Ixcamula,  action  at,  156 


Jecker,  and  Jecker  bonds,  54,  55 
Juarez,  Benito,  President  of  Mexico, 
is  Professor  at  Oaxaca,  5  ;  his 
influence  in  Oaxaca,  29  ;  exiled, 
31;  Governor  of  Oaxaca,  42; 
resists  French  intervention,  63 
et  seq. ;  passes  Ley  Juarez,  43  ; 
becomes  President,  44 ;  leaves 
city  of  Mexico,  73  ;  behaviour  to 
Maximilian,  112;  re-elected,  131, 
136  ;  tries  to  perpetuate  himself 
in  oflice,  137  et  seq.;  his  death, 
148 


Lago,    Baron,    Austrian    Minister, 
arranges   capitulation  of  city  of 
Mexico,  114,  115 
L6pero,  vagabond  class,  253 
Lerdo  de  Tejada,  Sebastian,  Presi- 
dent of  Supreme  Court,  his  party, 
138;    stands  as  President,   139; 
becomes   President  on   death   of 
Juarez,  148;   his  character,  150; 
pohtical      errors,       151  ;      over- 
thrown,  and   escapes   to  United 
States,  161 
Lerdo  de  Tejada,  Law  so  called,  51 
Ley  Fuga,  its  purpose,  179 
Limantour,    Jose,    financier,    135  ; 
becomes     Minister     of     Finance, 
256  j  Minister  of  Finance,  257  ; 


318 


INDEX 


quoted,  265  ; 
sor  to  Diaz, 
to  Diaz,  304 


indicated  as  succes- 
291 — 292  ;    adheres 


French    troops    in    Mexico, 
defeated  at  Puebla,  61 — 62 


58; 


Macgregor,  Gregor,  Cacique  of 
Poyais,  53     ^ 

Madero,  Francisco,  his  origin,  293  ; 
opposes  Diaz,  299  et  seq. ;  his 
opinions,  300  ;  imprisoned,  302  ; 
revolts,  303 

Magnus,  Baron,  assists  in  defence 
of  MaximiHan,  114 

Marquez,  General,  called  Tiger  of 
Tacubaya,  Conservative  leader, 
51,  52;  his  defence  of  city  of 
Mexico,  112  et  seq.;  endeavours 
to  relieve  Puebla,  108,  no; 
defends  city  of  Mexico,  113 
et  seq.  ;   his  escape,  115 

Marquez  de  Leon,  General,  revolts 
in  Sinaloa  and  Lower  Cahfornia, 
198 

Matamoros,  taken  by  Diaz,  156,  157 

Mateo  Xindihui,  San,  action  at,  146 

Maximilian,  Archduke,  Emperor  of 
Mexico,  his  character,  57  ;  reaches 
Mexico,  74 ;  resists  claims  of 
Church,  75  ;  recognition  of  re- 
fused by  United  States,  75  ; 
painful  position  of,  89  ;  his 
fall  and  death,  in,  112 

Mayas,  Indian  tribe  of  Yucatan,  277 
et  seq. 

Mexico,  Republic  of — colonial 
period,  10 — 22  ;  first  civil  war  in, 
23  ;  declares  its  independence,  24  ; 
anarchy  in,  25  ;  condition  in  1859, 
53  et  seq. ;  its  physical  defi- 
ciencies, 124,  125  ;  city  of, 
besieged  and  taken  by  Repub- 
licans, 113,  115  ;  drainage  of,  260 
et  seq. 

Miahuatlan,  action  at,  99 

Michoacan,  disturbances  in,  see 
Church 

Mier  y  Teran,  Luis,  see  Teran. 

Miramon,  General,  leader  of  Con- 
servatives, 44 ;  borrows  money 
from  Jecker,  55 


Mitla  battle,  48 

Mori,  Patrona,  mother  of  Porfirlo 

Diaz,  2  ;  widowed,  3 
Moyos,  Indian  tribe  in  Sonora,  271 


Napoleon  I.,  Emperor,  quoted,  122 
Napoleon  III.,  Emperor  of  French, 

reasons    for   his   intervention    in 

Mexico,  56 
Nickel  currency,  story  of,  233  et  seq. 
Noria,     La,     Diaz's     ranch,     134  ; 

proclamation  of,  145  ;  burnt,  149 
Nuno  de  Guzman,  Spanish  explorer, 

discovers  Yaquis,  270 


Oaxaca,  State  and  City,  Porfirlo 
Diaz  born  in,  i  ;  taken  by  ene- 
mies of  Dictator  Santa  Ana,  40 ; 
retaken,  41  ;  taken  again,  42  ; 
taken  by  Republicans,  49  ;  sur- 
rendered to  French,  85  ;  risings 
in,  144,  153;  Diaz  becomes 
Governor  of,  218 

Ord,  General,  instructed  to  pursue 
marauders  in  Mexico,  193 

Ordaz,  Republican  General,  killed, 
48 

Orizaba,  defence  of  by  French,  62 

Oronoz,  General,  Imperialist  Gover- 
nor of  Oaxaca,  98  et  seq. 

Ortega,  Dona  Delfina,  first  wife  of 
Diaz,  134 

Ortega,  General,  Governor  of 
Puebla,  65  et  seq. 


Palo  Blanco,  plan  of,  154  et  seq. 
Perez,  Marcos,  Professor,  patronizes 

Porfirio    Diaz,    29 ;     imprisoned, 

33  5  in  civil  war,  49 
Pin,  Colonel  du,  commands  French 

counter  guerrilla,  63 
Pindray,   Comte  de,  filibuster,    his 

death,  54 
Portazgos,  ship  taxes,  245,  248 
Prim,  General,  commands  Spanish 

troops  in  Mexico,  56  et  seq. 
Puebla  de  Los  Angeles,  repulse  of 

French    at,    61  ;     siege    of     by 

French,  65,  72  ;   Diaz  takes,  108 


INDEX 


319 


QuER^TARO,  siege  of,  iii 
Quivira,  supposed  Eldorado,  270 

Ramirez,  Jesus,  revolts  in  Sinaloa, 

198  ;   shot,  199 
Raousset-Boulbon,  Gaston  Raoulx, 

Comte   de,  filibuster,  his   career, 

54 
Reyes,  General,  chosen  as  candidate 

for  Vice-Presidency,  299  ;   exiled, 

ibid,  and  302 
Rhodes,  Cecil,  his  view  of  Mexico, 

121 
Root,  Mr.   Elihu,  visit  to  Mexico, 

and  his  praise  of  Diaz,  294 
Rosas  Landa,  General,  Republican 

leader,  his  misconduct,  49 
Rotative  compromise,  meaning  of, 

212,  214 

Saligny,  M.  de,  French  Minister  in 
Mexico,  56 ;  misleads  General 
Lorencez,  59 

Salinas,  General,  Republican  leader, 
his  failure,  48,  49 

Salm  Salm,  Prince,  quoted,  109,  113 

Santa  Ana,  Dictator  of  Mexico,  his 
character,  31 

Sherman,  General,  occupies  Savan- 
nah, 88 

Sonora,  Province,  mines  of,  and 
raids  of  filibusters  on,  54 

Tabera,  Ramon,  General,  surrenders 
city  of  Mexico,  1 1 5 

Taft,  Mr.,  President  of  United  States, 
meets  Diaz  on  frontier,  295 

Tecoac,  battle  of,  160 

Tehuantepec  Isthmus,  45  et  seq. 

Teran,  Luis  Mier  y.  General,  sup- 
ports Diaz,  146 ;  Governor  of 
Veracruz,  his  character  and  bru- 
tality, 200 — 206  ;  rejected  as 
successor  to  Diaz,  216 

Textupec,  plan  of,  154  et  seq. 


Thornton,     Sir     Edward,     British 
Minister    at    Washington,     arbi- 
trates between  the  United  States 
and  Mexico,  188 
Tierra  Baldia,  meaning  of,  283 
Tolentino,  General,  joins  Diaz,  160 
Torreon,  massacre  of  Chinese  at,  285 
Trevino,     General,     instructed     by 
Diaz  to  restore  order  on  frontier, 
194 
Turner,    J.    R.,    author    of    "  Bar- 
barous Mexico,"  quoted,  275 


United  States,  their  patience  with 

Mexico,  184,  187 
Uraga,     General,     goes     over     to 

Maximilian     and     attempts     to 

seduce  Diaz,  82 — 83 

Valle  Nacional,  tobacco  planta- 
tions of  and  slavery  on,  279  et  seq. 

Vega,  Diaz  de  la,  General,  makes 
sortie  from  Mexico,  113 

Veracruz,  headquarters  of  Repub- 
lican party,  44 ;  massacre  at, 
200  et  seq. ;  railway  from  to 
Mexico,  225  ;  Pacific  railway  line 
purchased  by  Government,  259 

Walker,  filibuster,  53 
Wyke,  Sir  Charles,  British  Minister 
in  Mexico,  56 


Yaquis,  Indian  tribe,  story  of,  270 

et  seq. 
Yucatan,     Province,     275  ;      sisal 

hemp      plantations       of,       277 ; 

slavery  on,  278  et  seq. 

Zapoteca,      Indian      tribe,      their 

character,  30 
Zaragoza,  General,  defends  Puebla, 

58  ^i  seq.  ;  his  death,  65 


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